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CIVILISATION 
AT  THE  CKOSS  EOADS 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

THE  GOSPEL  AND  HUMAN  NEEDS:  being 
the  Hulsean  Lectures,  delivered  before  the 
University  of  Cambridge,  1908-9,  with 
additions.  Sixth  Impression.  Grown  8vo, 
is.  6d.  net. 

PopuLAB  Edition.    Crown  8vo,  paper 
covers,  6d.  net. 

RELIGION  AND  ENGLISH  SOCIETY.  Two 
Addresses,  delivered  at  a  conference  in 
London,  1910.  Fourth  Impression.  8vo, 
paper  covers,  1«. ;  cloth,  2«. 

ANTICHRIST  AND  OTHER  SERMONS. 
Crown  8vo,  5s.  net. 


LONGMANS,  GREEN  AND  CO. 

LOKDON,  NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 


CIVILISATION 
AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 


FOUR  LECTURES 

DELIVERED   BEFORE  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 

IN  THE  YEAR  1911 

ON  THE  WILLIAM  BELDEN  NOBLE  FOUNDATION 


BY 

JOHN  NEVILLE  FIGGIS,  Litt.D. 

A 

or  TBE   COMUUNITT   Or  THB  RE8DRBECTI0N 
BONOBABT  TBLLOW   Or  ST.   CATHABINs'b   COU<BaC,   CAMBBIDQa 


TffIRD  IMPPiSSiOir  ''    > 


LONGMANS,   GREEN   AND   CO. 

39    PATERNOSTER    ROW,    LONDON 

NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1913 

AD  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1912,  BT 
LONGUANB,  GBBEN*  AND  CO. 


FRATRl  MEO  CARISSIMO 
a.  B.  ». 


273422 


THE  WILLIAM  BELDEN  NOBLE  LECTURES 

This  Lectureship  was  constituted  a  perpetual  foundation 
in  Harvard  University  in  1898,  as  a  memorial  to  the  late 
William  Belden  Noble  of  Washington,  D.  C.  (Harvard^ 
1885).  The  terms  as  revised  by  the  founder  and  accepted 
by  the  President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard  College,  Novem- 
ber 26,  1906,  provide  that  the  lectures  shall  be  delivered 
annually,  and,  if  convenient,  in  the  Phillips  Brooks  House 
during  the  season  of  Advent.  It  is  left  with  the  Corpora- 
tion to  determine  the  number  of  lectures.  Each  lecturer 
shall  have  ample  notice  of  his  appointment,  and  the  publica- 
tion of  each  course  of  lectures  is  required.  The  purpose  of 
the  Lectureship  will  be  further  seen  in  the  following  citation 
from  the  deed  of  gift  by  which  it  was  established  :  — 

"The  object  of  the  founder  of  the  Lectures  is  to  continue 
the  mission  of  William  Belden  Noble,  whose  supreme  desire 
it  was  to  extend  the  influence  of  Jesus  as  the  way,  the  truth, 
and  the  life;  to  make  known  the  meaning  of  the  words  of 
Jesus,  '  I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life,  and  that  they 
might  have  it  more  abundantly.'  Li  accordance  with  the 
large  interpretation  of  the  Influence  of  Jesus  by  the  late 
Phillips  Brooks,  with  whose  religious  teaching  he  in  whose 
memory  the  Lectures  are  established  and  also  the  founder 
of  the  Lectures  were  in  deep  sympathy,  it  is  intended  that 
the  scope  of  the  Lectures  shall  be  as  wide  as  the  highest  inter- 
ests of  himianity.  With  this  end  in  view,  —  the  perfection 
of  the  spiritual  man  and  the  consecration  by  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  of  every  department  of  human  character,  thought,  and 
activity,  —  the  Lectures  may  include  philosophy,  literature, 
art,  poetry,  the  natural  sciences,  political  economy,  sociol- 
ogy, ethics,  history,  both  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  as  well  as 
theology  and  the  more  direct  interests  of  the  religious  life. 
Beyond  a  sympathy  with  the  purpose  of  the  Lectures,  as 
thus  defined,  no  restriction  is  placed  upon  the  lecturer." 


CONTENTS 

I.  Armageddon  or  the  Intellectual  Chaob  .  8 

n.  Babylon  or  the  Moral  Crisis    ....  65 

in.  Calvary  or  the  Challenge  of  the  Cross  121 

IV.  SioN  OR  the  Christian  Fact 179 

Appendix.    King  Richard  the  Third  and  the 

Reverend  James  Thompson jj85 

Notes 273 


PREFACE 

Mystical  titles  are  not  much  in  fashion.  Yet 
I  have  kept  the  alternative  names  of  each 
Lecture,  because  they  suggest  even  more  than 
they  express  of  the  nature  of  the  book.  Their 
apocalyptic  associations  may  also  serve  to 
guard  against  misconception.  The  title  of  the 
whole  course  and  certain  criticisms  in  the  first 
Lecture  might  seem  to  imply  that  I  desire  to 
controvert  the  main  thesis  of  the  late  Father 
Tyrrell's  famous  work.*  This,  however,  is  not 
the  case.  Too  greatly  am  I  in  debt  to  all  the 
writings  of  that  arresting  author  and  especially 
to  his  posthumous  work  to  have  any  such 
thought.  But  I  do  desire  to  point  out  that 
the  problem  can  be  studied  from  more  stand- 
points than  one.  Something  is  crumbling  all 
around  us.  That  is  clearer  every  moment.  I 
write  this  on  the  day  of  the  introduction  of  the 
Bill  for  a  Minimum  Wage.  Is  it  Christianity 
that  is  decaying,  or  civilisation  in  its  existing 
shape?  That  conventional  Christianity  is  going 
or   gone,    no    one    will    question.    So    much 

*  Christianity  at  the  Cross  Roads.    Longmans. 
iz 


X  PREFACE 

the  better.  But  on  the  whole  it  seems  to  me, 
that  what  is  vanishing  is  not  that  pecuHar 
kind  of  social  life  we  call  the  Christian  Church, 
except  certain  accidental  elements  inextricably 
bound  up  with  the  existing  regime.  Rather, 
we  are  in  the  midst  of  a  process  not  unlike  that 
of  Western  Europe  in  the  Fifth  Century,  when 
the  world-organisation  was  on  its  deathbed, 
and  the  Church  alone  remained  unshaken.  The 
more  I  contemplate  the  face  of  things  the  more 
does  there  come  before  me  the  vision  of  a  whole 
order  changing.  In  a  few  years,  we  shall, 
perhaps,  be  saying  something  like  what  Luther 
said  three  centuries  and  a  half  ago  about  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire:  — 

"Die  Welt  ist  am  Ende  kommen,  das  romisch 
Reich  ist  fast  dahin  und  zerrissen."  This 
change  is  universal;  but  the  Christian  Church 
will  survive  it,  on  the  very  ground  that  it  pos- 
sesses many  elements  incompatible  with  our 
present  system,  and  that  its  spirit  is  the  scorn 
of  all  that  is  fashionably  enlightened.  That 
scorn  will  doubtless  be  the  fortune  of  the  present 
volume.  Indeed  this  must  be  the  case  with 
any  attempt  to  commend  the  traditional  faith 
in  an  age  which  finds  interest  in  any  and  every 
fantasy,  but  dismisses  a  priori  the  Catholic 
creed.  I  am  not  however  greatly  disturbed  by 
this  thought.    The  mental  habit  of  our  day, 


PREFACE  xi 

like  other  of  its  qualities  does  not  appear  to  me 
so  profound  or  lasting;  and  will  undergo  "a 
sea-change  into  something  rich  and  strange" 
along  with  the  other  elements  in  our  life.  Thus 
if  it  should  seem  that  these  lectures  are  so  many 
"Unzeitgemasse  Betrachtungen,"  I  should  not 
grieve.  They  may  not  fit  with  the  prevailing 
fashion  among  the  "intellectuels."  It  is  at 
least  not  inconceivable  that  the  ground  of  this 
is  that  there  is  something  imperfect  in  that 
fashion.  A  thing  is  out  of  date,  because  it 
looks  to  the  future,  no  less  than  when  it  harks 
back  to  the  past. 

After  this  course  was  delivered,  there  was  pub- 
lished in  England  a  volume  directly  traversing 
that  view  of  the  nature  of  the  Christian  experi- 
ence which  is  set  out  in  the  fourth  lecture. 
Since  the  book  appeared  of  some  importance, 
owing  to  the  controversy  which  it  evoked,  I 
have  thought  it  well  to  devote  an  appendix  to 
the  general  historical  question  which  it  involves. 
I  suppose  that  no  one  who  has  watched  the  rise 
and  fall  of  the  uncounted  historical  theories,  all 
plausible,  which  have  appeared  in  regions  far 
removed  from  the  fever  spot  of  Christian  origins, 
is  likely  to  be  disturbed  by  Mr.  Thompson's 
hypothesis.  Since,  however,  these  topics  are 
oftentimes  debated  by  persons  whose  acquaint- 
ance with  general  historical  investigation  is 


xii  PREFACE 

other  than  obvious,  I  have  thought  it  well  to 
indicate  some  points  a  little  more  at  large.  In 
that  appendix  I  should  like  to  have  quoted 
pages  from  the  Chapter  on  "CausaHty  and 
Natural  Law,"  in  Professor  Wendland's  ad- 
mirable book  Miracles  and  the  Christian 
Church.  But  I  read  it  too  recently  to  make 
that  possible.  I  would  also  refer  to  some  re- 
marks of  Professor  James  Ward  in  the  earlier 
part  of  his  new  series  of  Gifford  Lectures  — 
Pluralism  and  Theism,  which  bear  on  the 
relation  of  historical  knowledge  and  real  indi- 
viduality to  all  theories  of  inevitable,  unbroken 
cosmic  development,  mechanically  interpreted. 
Here  I  would  only  repeat  with  emphasis  my 
persuasion  that  it  is  only  after  a  judgment  of 
the  total  character  of  the  Christian  experience, 
that  we  ever  can  (or  ever  do)  profitably  ap- 
proach the  investigation  of  its  details.  This 
is  true  on  both  sides,  and  is  shewn  in  the  present 
controversy.  It  is  precisely  this  total  super- 
natural character,  which  I  believe  to  be  as 
firmly  established  historically  as  anything  of 
that  nature  can  ever  be  —  and  to  be  disbe- 
lieved only  on  account  of  presuppositions  in- 
compatible with  its  truth.  In  this  respect  and 
certain  others  these  lectures  may  serve  as  a 
sort  of  sequel  to  the  earlier  course  delivered  at 
Cambridge  on  the  foundation  of  Dr.  Hulse; 


PREFACE  xiii 

and  may  correct  certain  misconceptions,  es- 
pecially in  regard  to  the  third. 

With  slight  alterations  these  lectures  are 
printed  substantially  as  they  were  delivered. 
Never  a  member  of  that  company  which  re- 
gards a  book  as  likely  to  promote  the  glory  of 
God  in  proportion  as  it  is  ill  written,  I  have 
taken  pains  to  make  it  readable.  But  I  cannot 
pretend  to  be  satisfied  with  the  result.  Further 
delay,  however,  must  not  be  thought  of  and 
such  as  it  is,  the  book  must  go  forth. 

The  Rev.  Alexander  Wicksteed  is  deeply  my 
creditor.  Owing  to  his  kindness  in  reading  the 
proofs  and  verifying  references,  I  trust  that  the 
proportion  of  errors  is  less  than  has  sometimes 
been  the  case  with  writings  of  the  author;  or 
than  always  would  be  without  such  aid. 

Finally,  I  must  tender  my  grateful  thanks  to 
the  authorities  of  Harvard  University,  who  by 
appointing  me  to  this  office  of  Noble  Lecturer 
are  "the  only  begetters"  of  the  ensuing  pages: 
I  would  hereby  assure  them  that  I  would  the 
book  were  more  worthy  of  its  "domicile  of 
origin"  and  that  I  shall  not  soon  forget  the 
days  that  I  spent  in  the  enjoyment  of  their 
proverbial  hospitality. 

J.  Neville  Figgis. 

HonsB  OF  THE  Resurbection, 
March  21.  1912. 


CIVILISATION 
AT  THE   CROSS  ROADS 


CIVILISATION  AT 
THE  CROSS  ROADS 

LECTURE  I 

ARMAGEDDON  OR  THE  INTELLECTUAL 
CHAOS 

Not  long  since  a  writer,  who  seemed  to 
wield  flame  rather  than  words,  directed 
all  our  thoughts  to  the  topic  of  Christianity 
at  the  Cross  Roads,  And  indeed  the  tragedy 
of  Tyrrell's  own  life  symbolised  that  crisis 
in  thought  of  which  the  book  was  the 
expression.  More  than  any  of  his  works 
was  his  hfe  an  illustration  of  the  momen- 
tous problems  urgent  at  this  moment  on 
all  reflecting  men.  How  far  can  the  new 
wine  of  modern  knowledge  and  changed 
ways  of  thought  be  poured  into  the  old 
bottles  of  traditional  religion?  Is  the  Chris- 
tian Church  (with  whatever  modifications) 
still  to  remain  the  depositary  of  the  spiritual 
experience  of  the  race,  the  dispenser  of 
the  gifts  of  grace,  the  home  of  the  soul, 
and  the  instrument  of  all  redemption;  or 

8 


4       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

shall  that  supernatural  claim  be  rejected 
as  a  phantom  or  transcended  as  a  phase 
of  history  now  drawing  to  its  close?  Allied 
to  this  topic  there  is  another  no  less  mo- 
mentous,—  that  is,  the  condition,  not  of 
the  Church,  but  of  civihsation.  Tyrrell 
appears  to  have  thought  that  the  knowl- 
edge of  our  day  and  its  theories  were  so 
secure  as  to  enable  us  from  that  standpoint 
to  sit  in  judgment  on  the  strange  events 
which  gave  rise  to  the  Christian  Church, 
and  also  that  the  gifts  of  twentieth  century 
civilisation  were  so  strongly  entrenched 
behind  the  walls  of  physical  science  that 
they  could  not  be  lost.  Transferred  they 
might  be,  say,  to  the  yellow  races,  Europe 
reverting  to  another  dark  age;  but  lost, 
like  the  culture  of  the  ancient  world  before 
the  barbarian,  that  is  not  to  be  thought  of. 
Neither  of  these  statements  appears  to 
me  to  be  justiJBed.  In  the  jBrst  place  there 
are  so  many  aspects  of  life  which  our 
present  day  civihsation  either  ignores  or 
depreciates  that  I  fail  to  see  how  we  can 
take  its  principles  for  anything  more  than 
a  partial  and  abstract  account  of  certain 
elements   of   the   world.    These   elements 


ARMAGEDDON  5 

indeed  it  enables  us  to  control.  And  we 
have  achieved  therein  a  success  without 
parallel  in  the  past  and  with  yet  greater 
promise  for  the  future.  But  I  do  not 
conceive  the  scientific  or  mathematical 
temperament  as  in  any  way  final.  Large 
elements  of  life,  the  artistic,  the  social,  the 
personal,  it  cannot  handle,  and  when  it  tries 
to  do  so  it  is  apt  to  come  to  grief,  and  this 
quite  apart  from  religion.  One  side  of  sci- 
ence indeed,  its  reverence  for  fact,  is  lead- 
ing it  to  recognise  an  element  best  described 
as  supernatural  in  human  Ufe,  and  also  to 
confess  its  own  impotence  to  offer  any 
interpretation  of  the  world  as  a  whole. 
Yet  the  scientific  temperament,  in  ordinary 
speech,  means  more  than  this.  It  implies 
an  assumption  that  knowledge  can  be 
arranged  on  a  schematic  basis,  and  that 
all  events  can  be  viewed  as  the  unalterable 
issue  of  the  past,  because  everything  is 
bound  together  by  the  nexus  of  cause  and 
effect  mechanically  interpreted,  and  there 
are  in  Ufe  no  new  beginnings.  This  assump- 
tion is  opposed  to  any  such  scheme  as  the 
Christian,  which  teaches  not  merely  a 
spiritual  universe  behind  the  natural,  but 


6       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

also  the  existence  of  a  multitude  of  spirits 
with  a  real,  though  limited,  freedom  and 
shews  us  a  world  whose  issues  are  unpre- 
dictable, with  as  many  loose  ends  as  there 
are  individuals,  instead  of  the  rounded 
system  of  the  universe  totus  teres  atque 
rotundus,  which,  though  far  from  being 
demonstrated  or  demonstrable,  is  the  un- 
alterable dogma  of  many  modern  enquirers. 
Dr.  Bussell  shews  how  fatal  this  notion  is 
to  all  belief  in  real  individuahty.^  "Such 
"  theoretical  doubt  can  never  seriously  im- 
"pair  the  vital  impulse,  the  enjoyment  of 
"  the  struggle  and  doubtful  issue.  Perhaps 
1'a  more  urgent,  serious  danger  lies  in  the 
**  strange  hybrid  of  philosophic  and  reli- 
"gious  thought,  the  metaphysical  mysticism 
**  which  disconcertingly  alternates  emotion 
"  and  logic.  To  this  reference  has  been  and 
"will  be  so  frequent  that  it  is  needless  to 
"enlarge  upon  the  obvious  defect  it  shares 
"with  all  previous  and  kindred  systems. 
**It  neither  explains  nor  justifies  the  per- 
"sonal,  which,  whether  by  accident  or 
**  providence  or  by  some  inscrutable  yet 
*' purposive  law,  seems  to  have  been  the 
*'  goal  of  development  on  the  earth.    After 


ARMAGEDDON  7 

the  painful  discovery  of  the  self  as  the 
true  seed  of  philosophy,  practical  ethics, 
reUgion,  and  political  agitation,  it  is  use- 
less to  point  out  that  the  discovery  is,  after 
**all,  worthless.     We  are  still  left  with  an 
t  acute  sense  of  its  truth.    But  we  can  more 
T  easily  shake  off  a  scientific  fatalism  which 
?  momentary  experience  contradicts  (at  least 
1'  so  far  as  our  f eehngs  go)  than  the  benumb- 
^*ing  influence  of  Pantheism." 

These  assumptions  of  the  scientific  imagi- 
nation are  not  incompatible  with  religion 
of  a  sort.  The  prevalence  of  Pantheism  is 
easy  to  reconcile  with  the  presuppositions 
of  the  mechanical  temperament,  which  are 
dominant  far  beyond  the  Hmits  of  physical 
enquiry,  and  indeed  are  chiefly  dangerous 
in  that  of  morals  and  religion. ^  It  is  not 
to  science,  but  to  "scientific  fatahsm,"  as 
it  has  been  well  termed,  that  our  difficulties 
are  due.  Only  when  science  captures  the 
imagination  and  seeks  to  subdue  history, 
philosophy,  and  the  individual  life  does 
she  conflict  with  our  religion.  It  is  on 
these  assumptions  that  popular  objections 
to  the  Christian  faith  are  based.  The 
dislike  of  miracles,  more  particularly  of  the 


8       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

Birth  and  Resurrection  narratives,  the 
hostility  to  the  supernatural  claims  of 
Christ,  to  the  doctrines  of  redemption  and 
the  sacramental  gifts,  in  a  word  to  the  whole 
theology  of  grace,  all  this,  so  far  as  most 
men  are  concerned,  has  httle  basis  beyond 
the  suspicion  that  science  can  find  no  place 
for  them  and  the  assumption  that  science 
covers  the  ground.  True,  indeed,  the  world 
of  fact,  historical,  artistic,  personal,  gives 
it  the  lie,  and  the  moment  you  stop  reason- 
ing and  start  to  live,  the  difficulties  dis- 
appear. But  it  is  just  these  facts  that 
men  obsessed  by  the  dominant  categories 
refuse  to  look  at.  There  are  on  the  one 
hand  the  practical  achievements  of  science, 
denied  by  no  one;  results  on  the  other  side 
are  less  apparent,  and  even  if  admitted  are 
supposed  to  be  susceptible  of  explanation. 
The  greatest  achievements  of  all,  the 
peace  of  God  ruHng  in  the  heart  of  the 
redeemed  and  the  conversion  of  sinners, 
cannot,  owing  to  their  very  magnitude  and 
psychical  nature,  be  represented  to  those 
without.  And  so  minds  enchained  to  the 
categories  of  continuity,  of  inevitable  evo- 
lution, the  laws  of  cause  and  effect  mechani- 


ARMAGEDDON  9 

cally  understood,  all  different  names  of  the 
same  notion,  fall  an  easy  prey  to  the  deter- 
minist  theory  of  personal  action  and  the 
rationalistic  projection  of  history.  They 
treat  as  anthropomorphic  and  antiquated 
the  world-old  notions  of  sin  and  dehver- 
ance  and  crave  for  a  vision  cosmic  and 
universal.  So  far  as  the  mass  of  men 
goes,  this  tendency  is  only  beginning,  but 
if  it  be  developed  to  the  full  it  will 
sweep  away  with  it  all  that  is  of  value 
in  our  world.  For  Western  civilisation, 
inherited  from  the  Christendom  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  has  been  built  on  the  faith  in 
personal  values  and  the  reahty  of  freedom.* 
This  faith  is  now  menaced,  and  in  many 
places  gone.  It  is  largely  lacking  in  the 
more  characteristic  products  of  the  present 
day — all  that  seems  most  modern  and 
freest  from  the  past.  Thus  it  is  true  to 
say  that  civilisation  is  at  the  cross  roads. 
There  is  a  ceaseless  conflict  between  ideals 
which  rest  on  the  personal  spiritual  claims 
of  the  Christian  Hfe  and  that  rigid  mechan- 
ism to  which  many  would  reduce  it;  while, 
even  among  those  who  retain  or  revive 
their  faith  in  freedom,  some  deny  in  toto  the 


10     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

Christian  aim.  So  far  as  the  Western  mind 
has  been  moving  away  from  personal  factors 
(including  of  course  those  social  unions  in 
which  alone  personality  can  thrive)  it  is 
becoming  more  and  more  enslaved  to 
categories  which  make  Christianity  appear 
not  so  much  false  as  meaningless.*  I  may 
quote  two  instances.  An  agnostic  friend 
once  wrote  to  me,  "I  have  never  been  able 
to  make  any  meaning  out  of  Revealed 
Religion."  Another  friend,  not  agnostic, 
once  said,  "I  am  interested  in  the  cosmic 
and  philosophical;  you  in  the  personal  and 
redemptive.  All  that  I  have  to  learn.  I 
hardly  know  what  the  words  mean."  That 
is  the  condition  which  the  Christian  has 
now  to  face  —  people  who  do  not  know  what 
the  words  mean. 

Moreover,  the  civilisation  which  the 
Western  world  inherits  was  erected  on 
the  belief  that  human  nature  through 
some  act  had  fallen  so  low  that  it  could 
only  be  raised  by  some  power  from  with- 
out, and  that  redemption  was  brought  by 
Jesus  Christ  and  mediated  by  the  Church. 
Such  a  doctrine  of  the  fall,  however  quali- 
fied, seems  out  of  relation  to  ideas  now 


ARMAGEDDON  11 

fashionable,  and  the  notion  of  redemption 
supernaturally  achieved  is  quietly  dropped. 
Further,  there  is  a  deeper  tendency  at  work. 
This,  while  not  denying  God's  existence, 
would  confine  Him  to  this  life,  and  resents 
all  claims  that  are  fundamentally  super- 
natural. Rehgion  is  in  this  view  an  idyll 
of  human  hfe,  the  uprising  of  the  soul  of 
man,  but  God  never  entered  the  world, 
never  could  enter  it  save  as  immanent  in 
the  whole  of  its  growth;  there  are  no 
violent  breaks,  no  catastrophes,  no  unique 
personahties,  no  really  new  events.  All 
goes  on  developing  by  a  continuous  process; 
religion,  like  the  world,  will  ultimately 
destroy  itself. 

It  is  the  aim  of  these  lectures  to  traverse 
this  view,  to  give  grounds  for  holding  that 
the  world,  as  it  now  is,  bears  on  the  face 
of  it  the  marks  which  call  for  redemption; 
that  Christianity  comes  to  us  alone  pro- 
fessing to  have  this  power  from  beyond, 
and  alone  able  to  meet  the  universal  need 
of  deliverance.  If  the  civilised  world,  saved 
by  a  remnant  of  faithful,  accepts  this 
evangel,  it  may  rise  to  heights  undreamed 
of.     If,  as  many  indications  suggest,  the 


U     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

world  at  large  rejects  it,  then  civilisation 
may  proceed  on  its  course  of  God-denial 
for  some  generations  or  even  centuries, 
but  it  is  doomed  like  the  ancient  world; 
for  no  culture  can  go  on  existing  with- 
out faith,  and  the  forces  of  materialism 
abeady  looming  as  a  cloud  will  gather 
volume,  until  the  land  of  the  spirit  is  over- 
shadowed. 

For  all  changes  notwithstanding,  and 
with  admitted  modifications  in  details,  the 
Christian  Church  faces  men  today,  not  as 
a  theory  but  as  a  Hfe,  giving  to  many 
amongst  us  a  sense  of  supernatural  vision 
and  redemptive  peace  to  be  gained  nowhere 
else  —  hardly  even  offered.  There,  as  a 
fact,  is  the  spiritual  home  of  many.  Are 
there  good  grounds  for  deserting  this  refuge  .^^ 
Is  the  mental  house  of  our  Hfe  so  compact 
and  guarded  that  we  can  trust  to  it  apart 
from  this  other .^^  Does  life,  as  we  watch 
or  feel  it,  allow  or  repudiate  the  sense  that 
man  needs  deliverance  .^^  Is  there  among 
all  opposing  theories  any  one  so  certain  or 
so  comprehensive  that  it  compels  us  to 
reject  these  venerable  claims  —  claims  not 
merely  of  the  past,  but  effective  now?    To 


ARMAGEDDON  13 

these  questions  I  shall  seek  to  make  some 
reply  in  the  following  four  lectures. 

In  the  first,  surveying  the  world  of  men's 
reflections,  I  shall  try  to  shew  that  the  one 
outstanding  feature  is  an  anarchy  without 
parallel,  and  that,  in  regard  alike  to  funda- 
mental beUefs  or  practical  claims,  however 
loud  or  insistent  be  the  voices  which  bid 
us  reject  the  Christian  claim,  they  are  in 
no  way  so  united  or  so  well  grounded  as  to 
settle  the  matter  a  priori;  they  may  not 
assist,  they  do  not  inhibit  the  faith  of  the 
Gospel.  In  the  second  lecture  we  shall 
glance  at  some  of  the  outward  features  of 
the  world,  which  indicate  that  human  nature 
needs  to  be  redeemed  and  lacks  the  force 
to  effect  deHverance  for  itself.  Then,  hav- 
ing dealt  with  the  present  situation,  I  shall 
in  the  third  lecture  endeavour  to  display 
the  gigantic  nature  of  the  Christian  claim, 
how  the  beUef  in  the  Hfe  beyond,  in  the 
love  of  God,  in  the  gifts  of  grace,  must 
change  all  our  standards,  so  that  Christians, 
whether  or  no  they  are  better,  are  amazingly 
different  from  other  folks ;  while  the  attempt 
to  represent  Christianity  either  as  a  sort  of 


V 


14     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

decorated  idealism  or  as  a  mere  emotional 
altruism  must  be  foredoomed  to  failure. 
Finally,  in  the  fourth  lecture,  I  shall  dis- 
cuss the  alleged  facts  that  lie  at  the  bottom. 
We  shall  see  there  that  the  facts  of  the 
life  of  Jesus  are  one  with  the  history  of 
the  Church  and  the  experience  of  the  indi- 
vidual Christian,  that  the  problem  is  con- 
cerned with  the  nature  of  that  experience. 
Of  that  experience  there  are  two  interpre- 
tations, the  natural  and  the  supernatural. 
We  shall  see  that  the  latter  is  that  which 
best  correlates  all  the  evidence,  provided 
we  are  not  inhibited  from  holding  it  through 
prepossessions  derived  from  other  sources. 
We  shall  conclude  that  if  we  beheve  the 
spiritual  aspirations  of  mankind  to  be 
rooted  in  reality,  the  Christian  as  a  member 
of  the  great  Catholic,  i.e.,  universal,  society 
is  the  person  most  closely  in  touch  with 
that  reahty;  for  he  and  he  alone  is  at  the 
centre  of  the  spiritual  experience  of  the 
race,  and  there  in  the  Catholic  Church  he 
drinks  "within  beneath  a  spring,"  which  is 
the  fount  and  source  of  all  redemption. 

I  said  "in  the  Catholic  Church."     Here 
and  elsewhere  in  these  lectures  I  shall  use 


ARMAGEDDON  15 

phrases  or  make  statements  with  which 
some  here  will  not  agree.  I  cannot  help  it. 
Indeed  it  had  been  my  hope  to  exclude 
such  things;  the  more  especially  as  I  hold 
most  firmly  that  all  those  who  have  a 
hold  on  the  supernatural  are  being  pressed 
together  (not  always  with  their  own  good- 
will) under  the  force  of  the  attack.  Of 
course  I  am  using  the  term  Church  in  the 
true  sense,  as  the  society  of  all  the  baptized, 
leaving  out  all  the  questions  of  organisation, 
of  discipline,  which  divide  men  still  further. 
Still  there  is  no  use  saying  that  all  nominal 
Christians  are  the  same,  when  they  are 
obviously  different,  or  that  there  is  no  dis- 
tinction between  a  Christian  and  a  moralist. 
Moreover,  a  man's  view  of  things  is  no  mere 
theory;  it  is  a  part  of  him  and  must  colour 
what  he  says.  It  is  safer  to  avow  it  frankly 
beforehand  than  to  make  a  profession  of 
impartiality,  which  is  always  a  delusion 
and  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  an  imposture. 
If  the  Catholic  principle  be  a  matter  of  life 
even  more  than  theory,  that  Hfe  is  bound 
to  shew  itself  in  one  who  possesses  or,  to 
be  accurate,  is  possessed  by  it.  Nor  indeed 
would  I  have  dared  to  insult  this  great 


16     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

University,  which  has  given  to  me  an  office 
so  honourable,  by  coming  from  Europe  in 
order  to  say  not  what  I  do  mean,  but  what 
I  do  not;  or  to  omit  integral  elements  in 
what  is  the  very  Hfe  of  my  spirit.  You  do 
not  want  in  this  place  colourless  nothings 
or  the  enunciation  of  sentiments  which 
seem  obvious  because  they  are  vital  to  no 
man's  faith.  You  want  a  man  with  a  man's 
hopes  and  doubts,  his  visions  and  his 
failures  —  all  that  he  most  vitally  is  —  not 
a  set  of  abstract  theses,  dialectically  argued. 
If,  therefore,  anything  said  here  may 
seem  to  wound  or  set  at  naught  the  con- 
victions of  some  who  value  the  Christian 
name,  or  of  some  who  do  not,  I  can  but 
crave  your  pardon  and  beg  you  to  beheve 
that  I  have  set  down  nothing  in  mahce, 
that  I  speak  to  you,  as  a  priest  in  the  Church 
of  God,  for  that  faith  which  Hves  in  me. 
May  He  grant  that  the  words  be  not  all 
in  vain. 


In  an  arresting  novel  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  men  of  the  last  century  wrote 
as  follows;     "Progress  to  what  and  from 


ARMAGEDDON  17 

whence?  Amid  empires  shrivelled  into 
deserts,  amid  the  wrecks  of  great  cities,  a 
single  column  or  obelisk  of  which  nations 
I  Pi  import  for  the  prime  ornament  of  their 
mud-built  capitals;  amid  arts  forgotten, 
commerce  annihilated,  fragmentary  htera- 
tures,  and  populations  destroyed,  the  Euro- 
pean talks  of  progress,  because  by  an 
ingenious  apphcation  of  some  scientific 
acquirements  he  has  estabhshed  a  society 
which  has  mistaken  comfort  for  civilisation." 
Perhaps  not  many  now  read  Tancred^ 
Yet  that  book  is  far  more  than  mere 
romance.  It  is  evidence  of  the  dissatis- 
faction with  modern  civilisation,  and  its 
"parvenu  vanity  felt  even  at  that  time  by 
an  acute  observer.  You  know  the  theme; 
how  the  young  Enghsh  lord,  weary  of  the 
intellectual  and  moral  chaos  of  the  West, 
sought  in  the  East  for  that  spiritual  force 
which  alone  would  raise  Europe  from  her 
degradation.  As  he  puts  it,  "Excepting 
those  who  still  cling  to  your  Arabian  creeds, 
Europe  is  without  consolation";  or  again, 
"Amid  the  wreck  of  creeds,  the  crash  of 
Empires,  French  revolutions  and  English 

reforms,    Catholicism    in    agony,    Protes- 
s 


18     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

tantism  in  convulsions,  Europe  demands 
the  keynote  which  none  can  sound.  If 
Asia  be  in  decay,  Europe  is  in  confusion. 
Your  repose  may  be  death,  but  our  hfe  is 
anarchy." 

These  passages,  and  still  more  the  general 
argument  of  the  book,  bring  out  the  fact 
that  in  the  mind  of  an  observer  whose 
allegiance  to  orthodox  Christianity  was 
not  otherwise  conspicuous,  the  spectacle 
of  the  Western  world  —  for  we  must  take 
the  whole  West  together  —  presented  itself 
in  somewhat  different  colours  from  the  rose 
tints  it  took  on  in  the  imaginations  of  that 
Manchester  school  which  was  then  at  the 
height  of  its  power;  that  civiHsation  in  the 
West,  so  far  as  we  can  separate  its  life  and 
culture  from  the  Christian  forces,  on  which 
it  still  largely  lives,  is  not  in  a  state  of  which 
we  are  to  be  hilariously  proud ;  that  it  needs 
redemption,  that  redemption  must  come 
from  without  and  must  take  on  a  super- 
natural, transcendent  character,  and  cannot 
come  from  a  development  of  the  principles 
of  the  Exchanges.  It  will  involve  in  some 
degree  those  principles  of  asceticism  and 
other-worldliness     popularly    regarded    as 


ARMAGEDDON  19 

specifically  Oriental,  and  inextricably  in- 
volved in  the  Catholic  religion  as  a  spiritual 
society. 

We  are  not,  be  it  observed,  drawing  a 
Rousseauesque  indictment  against  civilisa- 
tion and  exalting  the  noble  savage  quand 
meme.  For  civilisation  works  hand  in  hand 
with  religion,  in  so  far  as  it  treats  men  as 
ends  not  means,  and  by  its  ordered  variety 
of  life  gives  freer  place  to  development.  It 
is  just  these  things,  however,  that  are  in 
question  today;  there  we  are  at  the  Cross 
Roads.  They  are  right  who  speak  of  the 
"Gifts  of  CiviHsation"  as  they  see  the 
Church  and  culture  marching  hand  in  hand 
in  the  warfare  with  barbarism  and  un- 
ordered passion.  Only,  while  civilisation 
begins  by  ministering  to  man  as  a  spiritual 
being,  by  making  freedom  and  all  personal 
values  a  reality  and  preserving  space  for 
that  leisure  of  spirit  in  which  the  peace  of 
God  may  reign,  it  by  no  means  ends  at 
that  point.  Apart  from  a  God  ward  out- 
look it  may  tend  to  destroy  these  personal 
values  by  permitting  men  to  rest  in  the 
"much  goods  laid  up  in  store"  and  allow 
the  fortunate  in  a  purely  materialist  ambi- 


20     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

tion,  while  from  its  true  benefits  the  masses 
of  mankind  may  become  more  and  more 
shut  out.  This  has  been  its  great  vice  in 
past  history.  It  looks  a  little  as  though  it 
were  being  repeated  in  the  present.  Do  we 
not  see  before  us  a  world  intoxicated  with 
material  prosperity,  reckless  of  the  life  of 
the  spirit,  and  callous  to  the  misery  of  vast 
masses  of  its  fellow-men.'^ 

We  may  look  back  to  the  age  when  these 
spiritual  ends  of  civilised  hfe  were  partially 
attained  and  all  its  treasures  enjoyed  as  the 
gift  of  God,  but  can  the  modern  world 
claim  as  its  own  the  glories  of  the  ages 
which,  so  far  from  being  dark,  are  still  the 
refuge  of  souls  wearied  with  the  squahd 
fever  of  our  time?  It  cannot.  We  must 
admit  the  profound  difference  between 
the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  our  own  day 
and  those  of  the  age  which  produced  the 
Sainte-Chapelle,  the  frescoes  of  Giotto,  and 
the  Divina  Commedia,  Nor  would  any 
statistics  about  railroads  and  steamships 
ever  persuade  me  that  a  world  of  which 
these  things  are  the  characteristic  symbols 
is  inferior  to  that  which  flowers  in  the 
factory  town  or  the  mammoth  hotel. 


ARMAGEDDON  21 

Medieval  civilisation  was  no  flawless 
crystal.  Then  as  now  many  men  gave 
free  play  "to  the  lust  of  the  flesh,  the  lust 
of  the  eyes,  and  the  pride  of  hfe,"  but  they 
did  not  worship  these  things.  In  all  ages 
men  have  been  bad.  But  the  achievements 
of  the  thirteenth  century  were  owing  pre- 
cisely to  the  opposite  of  these  elements 
men  most  admire  today.  As  a  hostile 
writer  puts  it,  "they  had  one  idee  fixe, 
rehgion."  They  may  not  have  always 
served  God  very  well,  but  they  knew  that 
He  was  "the  chief  end  of  man."  That 
world  presents  neither  the  oleographic  pic- 
ture dear  to  sentimentahsts,  nor  yet  the 
mere  battle  of  kites  and  crows  conceived 
by  Puritan  and  Renaissance  pride.  Yet  its 
most  notable  quahties  —  the  things  that 
made  it  what  it  was  —  the  cathedral,  the 
minster,  the  university  (and  each  of  us 
here  owes  more  to  the  University  of  the 
Middle  Ages  than  he  is  apt  to  imagine),  the 
orders  of  chivalry,  the  hierarchy  of  society, 
the  communal  life  and  all  its  pageantry, 
that  unity  which  outlasted  so  much  con- 
flict, all  these  things  were  what  they  were 
because  of  men's  faith  in  God  and  man 


22     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

and  the  love  which  makes  him  free.  None 
of  them  could  have  been  at  all  in  the  form 
they  took,  had  that  faith  not  been  present; 
and  hence  Walter  Pater,  summing  up  the 
quahties  of  the  differing  cultures  of  the 
world,  speaks  in  the  famous  passage  on 
Mona  Lisa  of  "the  reverie  of  the  middle 
age  with  its  spiritual  ambitions  and  im- 
aginative souls"  as  contrasted  with  "the 
animalism  of  Greece,  the  lust  of  Rome,  the 
return  of  the  Pagan  world,  the  sins  of  the 
Borgias."  Always  rather  by  its  ideals 
than  its  achievements  do  we  judge  a  nation 
or  epoch.  These  ideals  can  be  seen  re- 
flected as  in  a  mirror  all  through  the  life 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the  peace  as  of  a 
strange  land  which  pervades  the  Historia 
Ecclesiastica  of  the  great  Northumbrian 
monk,  the  Venerable  Bede,  in  the  love  and 
universal  reverence  felt  for  S.  Francis  even 
in  his  lifetime,  in  the  mystery  plays  like 
Everyman,  in  the  almost  autocratic  influ- 
ence of  a  mystic  like  S.  Bernard,  even  indeed 
in  the  strength  of  the  Papacy  (for  it  rested 
not  on  material  force,  but  on  the  faith  of 
men),  above  all  in  the  most  characteristic 
of  all  its  fruits  —  books  such  as  The  Imi- 


ARMAGEDDON  23 

tation  of  Christ,  similar  works  like  the 
writings  of  Walter  Hilton,  or  Richard  RoUe, 
or  Dame  JuHan,  the  anchoress  of  Norwich. 
All  these  are  the  natural  fruit  of  the  time; 
they  express  its  spirit.  So  far  as  we  have 
anything  hke  them,  it  is  rather  as  protests, 
reactions,  the  work  of  those  who  repudiate 
the  prevalent  ideals,  unzeitgemdsse  Betracht- 
ungeuy  as  Nietzsche  would  call  them.  No 
one  can  deny  the  beauty  of  a  work  hke 
the  Pathway  of  the  Eternal  Wisdmn  or 
Tyrrell's  Oil  and  Wine,  but  their  distinction 
consists  in  thus  expressing  a  side  of  hfe  far 
from  popular.  The  dominant  feeling  of 
the  age  shrieks  itself  hoarse  in  the  news- 
papers and  expresses  itself  artistically  in 
the  New  Machiavelli  or  L'lle  des  Pinguins, 
and  I  cannot  feel  convinced  that  we  have 
gained  by  the  exchange. 

The  world  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  far 
enough  from  the  practice  of  hohness,  but 
at  least  it  did  not  question  the  ideal.  What 
are  men's  ideals  today?  It  would  be  hard 
to  tell.  But  so  far  as  their  main  energies 
are  concerned  and  we  can  form  any  judg- 
ment as  to  what  animates  the  man  in  the 
street,  I  cannot  doubt  that  it  is  truer  to  say 


24     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

that  Christianity  runs  counter  to  our  civil- 
isation than  that  it  fulfils  it.  In  places 
indeed  it  remains  intact,  but  they  are  as  a 
rule  those  least  touched  by  modern  develop- 
ments. The  village  church  is  the  home  of 
an  immemorial  piety  aHke  in  Bavaria  or 
in  Italy,  in  England  or  Ireland  —  I  suppose 
also  here;  though  this  statement  must  be 
made  with  very  large  reserves,  for  there  are 
districts  abroad  of  which  the  very  opposite 
is  true,  and  I  fancy  that  in  some  colonial 
places  there  would  be  an  equal  lack.  But 
can  that  or  anything  like  it  be  said  either 
of  the  most  educated  or  the  most  modern 
elements  of  society  .f^  Is  it  not  rather  the 
case,  as  one  wrote  to  me  of  the  business 
world,  "Christianity  counts  for  nothing, 
men  simply  leave  it  alone". ^  Or  as  another, 
an  educated  woman,  said  of  a  sermon  on 
penitence,  "It  seemed  to  me  all  so  unreal; 
I  wondered  how  many  of  the  people  in 
that  church  had  any  inkhng  of  what  was 
meant ".^  That  is  the  point;  the  ordinary 
Christian  doctrines  of  grace,  and  sin,  and 
pardon  have  become  almost  meaningless 
to  many,  and  require  translation  before 
people  will  even  Hsten  to  them.   The  phrases 


ARMAGEDDON  25 

of  the  New  Testament  seem  to  savour  of 
the  Sunday  School  novelette  and  have  lost 
their  vital  force.  Canon  Carnegie,  indeed, 
seems  to  desire  to  take  this  condition  as 
a  standard  and  to  make  the  ordinary  man's 
dishke  of  such  terms  as  hoHness  or  sin  a 
reason  for  leaving  the  things  out  of  our 
message.  In  his  preface  to  Churchmanship 
and  Character^  he  writes  that  "Christians 
to  a  large  extent  use  a  language  which  is 
not  understood  by  ordinary  folk.  The  ordi- 
nary normal  healthy  man  understands  what 
is  meant  by  goodness;  he  becomes  restive 
if  we  talk  to  him  of  righteousness.  He 
understands  what  is  meant  by  duty;  he 
hardly  listens  if  we  talk  to  him  of  vocation. 
He  understands  us  when  we  speak  of  moral 
depravity  and  regeneration  and  progress; 
he  pays  small  heed  to  statements  about  sin 
and  conversion  and  sanctification."  The 
author's  imphed  view  is  not  merely  that 
our  language  might  be  modernised,  which 
may  possibly  be  a  good  thing,  but  that  the 
rehgion  of  healthy  mindedness  is  practically 
to  be  taken  as  identical  with  the  faith  of 
redemption,  and  that  the  ideals  which 
dominate   the   Birmingham   business  man 


26     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

only  need  a  little  furbishing  to  be  seen 
to  be  fundamentally  Christian.  Nothing 
would  seem  to  me  more  opposed  to  S. 
Paul's  doctrine;  nor  would  his  language 
have  seemed  rational  to  Horace  or  Sue- 
tonius. Christianity  conquered  by  its  dif- 
ference from  every  other  system.  That  is 
not  to  deny  our  duty  of  commending  the 
faith  by  avoiding  merely  conventional  or 
cant  phrases,  but  of  all  heresies  that  of  the 
religion  of  healthy  mindedness  seems  to  me 
to  go  the  deepest.  I  quote  the  words  as 
evidence  of  the  existing  condition,  and  also 
giving  a  succinct  expression  to  the  view 
against  which  these  lectures  are  directed.  If 
the  world  is  to  be  brought  back  to  Christ,  it 
will  not  be  by  accepting  its  shibboleths  and 
seeing  God's  revelation  through  eyes  pur- 
blind with  avarice  or  satisfied  with  the 
things  of  this  world,  but  rather  by  dwelHng 
^N.  on  the  strange  new  Hfe  He  promises  and 
re-awakening  that  sense  of  sin  which  has 
become  unfashionable.  A  weightier  wit- 
ness is  that  of  the  great  philosopher  Rudolph 
Eucken.  In  the  Problem  of  Human  Life 
he  speaks  of  "the  severity  of  the  conflict 
with  modern  civiHsation  into  which  Chris- 


ARMAGEDDON  Vt 

tianity  has  fallen.  In  its  rich  unfolding  of 
hfe  the  modern  world  has  brought  an  untold 
wealth  of  things  new  and  great,  whose 
influence  no  one  can  escape  and  whose 
fruits  we  all  enjoy.  But  with  this  incon- 
testable gain  there  is  closely  interwoven  a 
characteristic  tendency  which  is  deeply  in- 
volved in  doubt  and  conflict.  Since  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  the 
modern  world  has  wrought  out  a  new  type 
of  Hfe,  which  departs  widely  from  the 
Christian.  A  powerful  hfe-impulse  forces 
the  thinking  and  the  activity  of  man  more 
and  more  into  the  world  which  Christianity 
regarded  as  a  lower  one;  in  this  world 
reason  reigns,  or  wherever  it  is  not  yet 
present  the  labour  of  men  seeks  to  create 
it;  forces  spring  up  ad  infinitum,  and  the 
increase  of  power  becomes  the  highest  and 
all-sufficient  goal  of  life.  The  greater  the 
strength  and  self-consciousness  which  this 
new  type  acquires,  the  more  evident  it 
becomes  that  it  is  incompatible  with, 
Christianity;  in  fact  that  the  fundamental 
tendencies  of  the  two  run  directly  counter 
to  each  other.  Their  peaceable  and  friendly 
co-operation,  such  as  existed  in  earUer  times, 


28     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

becomes  impossible;  a  clear  understand- 
ing is  increasingly  necessary;  continually 
harsher  is  the  rejection  of  Christianity  by 
those  who  follow  the  specifically  modern 
tendency.''"^ 

Equally  strong  is  the  stater^ent  in  another 
work,  Christianity  and  the  New  Idealism. 
"The  main  tendency  of  our  own  age,  with 
its  steadily  growing  spirit  of  independence, 
has  come  into  even  sharper  conflict  with 
Christianity.  That  it  had  a  stronger 
vitaUty,  and  made  existence  more  depend- 
ent on  man's  own  activity,  would  not 
necessarily  have  conduced  to  this  result. 
The  irreparable  breach  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  for  modern  thought  the  activity  and 
the  positive  trend  of  life  was  conceived  as 
man's  own  immediate  work,  as  the  out- 
come of  his  own  natural  strength;  whereas 
Christianity  regarded  them  as  emanating 
from  man's  relation  to  God,  through  an 
inward  renewal  of  his  being;  its  aflSirmation 
of  Hfe  is  not  direct,  but  is  only  reached 
through  negation  and  inward  change.  We 
must  beware  of  weakening  in  any  way  the 
opposition  between  the  Christian  and  the 
modern  points  of  view  —  an  opposition  so 


ARMAGEDDON  «9 

strong  as  absolutely  to  preclude  any  pros- 
pect of  easy  reconciliation."  ^ 

I  quote  these  statements  from  a  writer, 
who  is  very  far  from  being  a  defender  of 
ecclesiastical  Christianity,  as  evidence  that 
the  conflict  is  not  one  on  the  surface  or 
even  about  doctrine,  but  that  it  is  a  veri- 
table Armageddon  between  the  spirit  of 
Christ  and  that  of  antichrist.  And  indeed 
those  writers  grossly  err  who  argue  as 
though  all  wise  men  were  agreed  on  the 
fundamentals,  that  it  was  only  in  the 
formularies  fabricated  by  priests  that  diffi- 
culty existed.  The  attitude  of  such  a 
writer  as  Wilham  Scott  Palmer,  in  the 
Diary  of  a  Modernist,  that  the  Christian 
ideal  may  be  taken  for  granted  and  Nietz- 
sche be  ignored,  may  be  true  of  certain 
coteries  of  culture,  but  it  is  profoundly  false 
to  the  facts  of  Hfe  and  ignores  that  deep 
and  growing  chasm  which  separates  the 
aims  of  men.  Speaking  on  the  whole  and 
dismissing  the  natural  bias  for  counting 
on  one's  own  side  a  majority,  I  should  say 
that  there  are  no  longer  grounds  for  beUev- 
ing  that  the  Western  world  is  Christian 
now  in  a  sense  in  which  it  was  not  in  the 


30     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

period  immediately  preceding  the  peace  of 
the  Church  under  Constantine  the  Great. 
Of  course  Christian  ideals  still  affect  many 
who  repudiate  the  Christian  name,  such  as 
the  Positivists.  But  does  there  seem  much 
more  ground  for  saying  that  we  Hve  in  a 
Christian  world,  beyond  what  might  have 
been  said  in  the  time  of  TertulHan?  In 
many  ways  there  is  less  ground.  In  a 
charming  story  of  this  country,  Lady  Balti- 
more,^ the  writer  makes  his  society  people 
talk  of  having  given  up  rehgion,  as  though 
it  were  a  recognised  fact  that  even  nominal 
adhesion  to  it  had  ceased.  Nor  do  the 
statistics  of  church-going  in  England  favour 
a  different  view,  while  in  Lutheran  Ger- 
many or  what  was  until  recently  Catholic 
France  an  even  worse  dry  rot  has  set  in. 
So  far  as  we  can  judge,  Spain,  Italy,  and 
Portugal  are  in  like  case,  while  in  the  last 
the  government  has  embarked  on  a  definite 
poHcy  of  persecution,  and  in  many  districts 
of  France  it  is  said  that  the  municipality 
is  refusing  to  repair  the  churches  or  even 
to  permit  Catholics  to  do  so  at  their  own 
charges.  The  atmosphere  in  literature  and 
art,  in  novels  and  dramas,  in  newspapers 


ARMAGEDDON  81 

and  reviews  is  not  only  no  longer  Christian, 
but  is  largely  anti-Christian,  even  on  the 
ethical  side.  If  you  think  of  some  of  the 
names  most  honoured  of  late,  Thomas 
Hardy,  George  Meredith,  Mr.  Arnold  Ben- 
nett, Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells, 
or  Mr.  Henry  James,  however  different 
they  may  be  in  outlook,  none  of  them  can 
be  called  Christian,  while  for  some  it  seems 
impossible  to  name  the  subject  without  a 
sneer;  and  neither  M.  Anatole  France  nor 
Ibsen  can  control  their  disUke  of  a  reUgion 
which  is  to  them  mere  convention.  If 
further  you  enquired  of  the  most  highly 
educated  society  in  the  West,  whether  it 
is  specifically  Christian,  I  think  the  answer 
is  not  doubtful.  Would  there  be  a  very 
large  proportion  of  such  at  any  meeting  of 
scholars  or  scientific  men?  Is  there,  in 
any  real  sense,  at  the  Universities?  Doubt- 
less the  proportion  would  be  better  if  you 
substituted  the  Almanack  de  Gotha  for 
Minerva  in  your  researches;  for  of  those 
whose  names  are  in  the  former,  a  majority 
would  at  least,  for  hereditary  or  social  rea- 
sons, profess  allegiance  to  the  faith  of  their 
fathers.     But    frankly,    even    among    the 


32     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

general  public,  whether  you  take  as  your 
standard  the  fortunate  classes  or  the  dis- 
inherited, it  is  only  by  very  narrowly 
limiting  your  area  that  you  can  get  even 
an  appearance  of  any  general  adhesion  to 
the  ancient  faith.  I  am  not  lamenting 
this  condition.  It  is  partly  the  natural 
fruit  of  liberty.  With  toleration  ruling 
alike  in  practice  and  theory  it  is  clear  that 
many  whose  allegiance  has  been  merely 
nominal  will  drop  away,  and  in  some  cases 
hereditary  influence  is  now  on  the  other 
side;  while  in  those  who  remain  there  is  a 
growing  intensity,  which  more  than  makes 
up  for  the  lack  of  extension. 

Whether,  however,  we  lament  the  fact  or 
welcome  it  we  must  face  it.  So  far  as  num- 
bers go,  the  Christian  Church  is  no  more 
than  a  section  of  the  modern  world,  one 
among  its  many  several  developments. 
People  dislike  calling  it  a  sect  or  a  denomi- 
nation, but  it  can  be  nothing  else,  so  long 
as  there  are  large  numbers  who  repudiate 
all  part  or  lot  in  it  and  in  many  cases 
detest  its  ideals.  Civilisation  in  its  states- 
manship, its  economic  development,  and 
more  and  more  in  its  social  and  intellectual 


ARMAGEDDON  88 

life,  goes  on  its  way,  not  indeed  unaffected 
by  so  great  a  tradition,  yet  largely  inde- 
pendent of  it.  In  fine,  that  secularisation  of 
life  which  began  with  the  Renaissance  and 
was  developed  by  the  Reformation  has  now 
gone  much  farther.  Religion  has  become 
almost  entirely  departmental,  and  it  is  more 
feasible  than  it  once  was  to  treat  of  the  life 
and  manners  of  the  age  apart  from  Chris- 
tianity, and  to  leave  it  out  of  account  in 
estimating  the  hues  of  future  development. 
One  observer  definitely  states  that  rehgion 
may  not  be  regarded  as  so  much  a  private 
affair,  but  that  we  need  not  reckon  on  its 
influence  in  any  general  view  of  modern 
society.  Mr.  Masterman,  in  the  Condition 
of  England,^^  declares  that  "despite  raUies, 
the  process  continues.  It  continues  without 
violence,  continuously,  steadily  as  a  kind  of 
impersonal  motion  of  secular  change.  It  is 
the  passing  of  a  whole  civiHsation  away  from 
the  faith  in  which  it  was  founded  and  out 
of  which  it  has  been  fashioned."  Lord 
Haldane  declares  that  "the  dominant  ideals 
of  the  average  man  of  the  middle  class  in 
Scotland  appear  to  him  to  be  a  sort  of  mild 
agnosticism,"  ^^  and  from  what  I  am  told  of 
4 


34     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

this  country  and  Canada  the  only  difference 
is  that  the  schism  between  the  Church  and 
civiHsation  is  greater  than  in  the  old  world. 

And  not  only  is  the  Church  no  longer  the 
religion  of  civiHsation,  but  she  is  met  by 
many  competing  systems,  and  that  even 
on  her  own  hypothesis  that  mankind  needs 
redemption.  That  is  the  point.  They  are 
so  many.  We  live  in  an  age  of  unparalleled 
anarchy  both  moral  and  intellectual.  The 
confusion  of  tongues  is  worse  than  in  any 
Babel  of  old.  You  have  not  exhausted  the 
prospect  by  describing  the  Christian  Church 
as  only  one  among  many  competing  agen- 
cies. Nor  can  you  get  rid  of  her  claims  by 
saying  that  she  is  the  Church  only  of  the 
uneducated. 

For  what  are  the  alternatives  .^^  In  place 
of  this  body  which  has  stood  the  test  of 
experience,  what  is  there  offered  to  us? 
What  system  is  accepted  by  those  reflecting 
men  of  our  day  who  deny  the  claims  of  the 
Church  of  Christ?  Surely  by  this  time 
we  ought  to  have  a  clear  answer  if  mere 
reasoning  could  avail;  for  the  problem  of 
life  has  been  discussed  by  many  acute 
minds.    There  ought  to  be  some  body  of 


ARMAGEDDON  S5 

philosophic  doctrine,  the  possession  of  all 
educated  men.  Where  is  such  a  doctrine 
to  be  found?  If  we  are  to  give  up  our  life 
in  a  society,  which  has  enshrined  the 
essence  of  all  that  is  highest  in  the  religious 
experience  of  men,  we  ought  at  least  to 
learn  what  we  are  giving  it  up  for.  Besides, 
if  the  exercise  of  our  logical  faculties  were 
all-sufficient,  since  they  are  common  to  all 
men,  we  ought  to  know  where  we  are  by 
this  time.  But  we  don't.  That  is  the 
long  and  the  short  of  it.  Outside  the 
Church,  men  don't  know  where  they  are. 
On  the  one  hand  is  the  Church,  still  in 
possession,  still  taking  from  her  treasure 
house  things  new  and  old,  still  consoling 
and  converting  men;  she  has  history  on 
her  side  and  all  the  weight  of  tradition; 
there  breathes  in  her  temples  the  aroma 
of  all  the  souls  she  has  nourished  and 
still  nourishes,  and  on  the  other  hand 
there  is  —  what?  Is  there  any  other  faith 
or  fancy  which  holds  among  educated  men 
anything  Hke  the  predominant  influence 
of  rationalism  in  the  eighteenth  century? 
I  grant  you  that  the  intellectual  atmosphere 
we  breathe  is  no  longer  Christian;   that  if 


36     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

I  take  up  a  volume  of  verse  it  is  more  than 
likely  that  it  is  the  work  of  an  infidel;  that 
if  I  embark  on  a  new  philosopher  (there 
are  plenty  of  them)  ten  to  one  he  despises 
the  Christian  faith  so  deeply  that  he  has 
never  been  at  the  pains  even  to  think  what 
it  means;  that  if  I  broach  a  scientific 
historian  his  attitude  to  the  founder  of 
Christianity  will  not  improbably  be  one  of 
a  supercihous  patronage.  I  admit  that  the 
pictures  I  see,  the  books  I  read,  the  music 
I  hear,  the  plays  I  witness  are  largely 
the  work  of  men  outside  the  Church.  All 
this  on  the  negative  side  I  grant.  But 
what  is  there  positive  to  set  in  its  place? 
This  question  remains  without  reply.  Scien- 
tific materialism  is  not  held  as  a  creed 
except  by  few,  is  commonly  declared  not 
to  be  one,  although  its  presuppositions  rule 
men's  minds  to  a  larger  extent  than  they 
know.  Beyond  that  all  is  chaos.  Positivists, 
agnostics,  idealists,  pessimists,  optimists, 
sceptics,  theists,  atheists  jostle  one  another 
and  nobody  knows  what  his  next-door 
neighbour  thinks.  And  that  even  among  re- 
flecting and  cultivated  men,  who  are  above 
the  mere  vulgarities  of  money-making. 


ARMAGEDDON  87 

Twenty  years  ago  one  could  not  have 
said  this.  In  those  days  the  reply  would 
have  run  as  follows:  "As  to  the  vulgar, 
whether  learned  or  ignorant,  we  neither 
know  nor  care.  The  only  person  entitled 
to  a  judgment  is  the  trained  philosopher, 
and  from  such  the  answer  is  not  doubtful. 
All  who  do  not  write  themselves  down  as 
incompetent  are  agreed  upon  some  form  of 
ideahsm.  Their  attitude  to  religion  varies. 
Some  are  Christian  and  employ  their  philo- 
sophic doctrines  as  a  prop  to  orthodoxy. 
Others  are  Christians  with  a  difference  and 
use  their  faith  to  purge  tradition  of  its 
accretions.  Others  are  theists  and  find  in 
their  system  the  one  irrefragable  refutation 
of  materiaUsm;  others  interpret  the  doc- 
trine in  an  atheist  sense  or  in  one  purely 
sceptical.  All,  however,  are  agreed  that 
some  form  of  the  philosophy  which  was  de- 
veloped by  Hegel  out  of  Kant  is  the  only 
possible  resting-place  of  thinking  men. 
They  differ  from  the  master  in  many  ways, 
or  sometimes  deny  that  they  have  one. 
But  they  claim  that  the  doctrine  they  hold 
explicitly  is  implied  in  the  faith  of  all;  that 
it  combines  the  certitude  of  science  with 


38     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

the  comfort  of  religion;  that  with  the 
progress  of  education  it  will  become  a 
postulate  of  all  culture.  Whatever  of  the 
Christian  creed  may  be  harmonised  with 
this  system  will  endure;  for  these  are  the 
fundamental  ideas  of  religion;  the  rest  will 
vanish."  That  or  something  hke  was  the 
view  present  to  humble  enquirers  not  many 
years  ago. 

In  the  words  of  one  of  its  authorities,^^ 
"For  many  years  adherents  of  this  way  of 
thought  have  deeply  interested  the  British 
public  by  their  writings.  Almost  more 
important  than  their  writings  is  the  fact 
that  they  have  occupied  philosophical  chairs 
in  almost  every  University  in  the  kingdom. 
Even  the  professional  critics  of  idealism 
are  for  the  most  part  idealists  —  after  a 
fashion.  ...  It  follows  from  their  position 
of  academic  authority,  were  it  from  nothing 
else,  that  idealism  exercises  an  influence,  not 
easily  measured,  upon  the  youth  of  the 
nation  —  upon  those,  that  is,  who  from  the 
educational  opportunities  they  enjoy  may 
naturally  be  expected  to  become  the  leaders 
of  the  nation's  thought  and  practice."  Or 
as  a  hostile  critic  says,  "For  thirty  years 


ARMAGEDDON  89 

or  more  English  thought  has  been  subject, 
not  for  the  first  time  in  its  modern  history, 
to  powerful  influences  from  abroad.  The 
Rhine  has  flowed  into  the  Thames,  known 
locally  as  the  Isis,  and  from  the  Isis  the 
stream  of  German  ideahsm  has  been  dif- 
fused over  the  academical  world  of  Great 
Britain." 

It  can  hardly  be  questioned  that  this  is 
a  correct  account  of  the  philosophic  ortho- 
doxy of  the  last  generation,  and  perhaps 
it  may  still  be  called  orthodoxy.  But  is  • 
it  anything  more.'^  Is  it  dominant  among 
students  of  philosophy  in  the  same  sense 
as  it  was?  You  know  that  it  is  not.  Speak- 
ing in  this  place,  which  the  memory  of 
William  James  would  alone  suffice  to  render 
illustrious,  if  all  its  other  voices  were  silent, 
I  need  not  recall  to  you  the  philosophic 
movement  of  which  he  was  a  leader. 
Whether  its  trend  is  right  or  wrong,  it  is 
not  relevant  here  to  enquire.  Enough 
for  us  that  it  exists,  that  it  has  won  wide 
acceptance,  and  that  it  is  in  sharp  an- 
tagonism with  the  whole  anschauung 
which  a  little  while  ago  seemed  so  well 
estabhshed. 


40     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

M.  Bergson,  too,  has  won  a  fame  at 
least  not  inferior.  Whatever  his  ultimate 
place  in  the  history  of  thought,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  he  counts  and  will  count 
more  and  more  as  time  goes  on.  As  one 
put  it,  "in  future  we  may  be  pro-Bergso- 
nians  or  anti-Bergsonians,  but  we  shall  all 
be  post-Bergsonians."^^  Things  cannot  be 
as  though  he  had  not  written.  Yet  the 
whole  argument  of  L'Evolution  Creatrice 
and  his  other  works  is  the  direct  antithesis 
of  the  maxim  of  Hegel,  that  the  hidden 
secret  of  the  universe  must  be  penetrable 
to  thought.  Like  the  man  or  woman  in 
the  street,  the  lover,  the  soldier,  the  school- 
boy, Bergson  would  place  instinct  or  intui- 
tion on  a  higher  level  in  regard  to  our 
insight  into  reality  than  pure  intelligence. 
He  even  goes  so  far  as  to  pronounce  the 
intellect  incapable  of  comprehending  life 
since  it  has  been  formed  in  the  interests 
of  practical  activity  and  never  penetrates 
beyond  the  outward  aspect  of  things,  and 
even  that  it  exaggerates. 

If  you  go  further  and  take  up  any  philo- 
sophical journal  you  will  find  hints  of  other 
movements,  all  directed  against  orthodox 


ARMAGEDDON  41 

idealism.  We  have  new  realists  like  Mr, 
Bertrand  Russell  and  Mr.  G.  E.  Moore,  and 
they  are  not  alone,  at  least  on  the  critical 
side.  Writers  like  Mr.  Prichard  in  his 
criticism  of  Kant^^  and  Mr.  Joseph  are 
at  variance  with  what  has  been  the  main 
tendency  since  Kant.^^  They  are  opposed 
to  the  view  that  the  esse  of  things  is 
percijd;  while  Mr.  Galloway,  writing  from 
a  somewhat  different  angle,  declares  that 
philosophy  is  moving  towards  some  form 
of  ideal-reahsm,  or,  in  other  words,  is 
moving  right  away  from  the  direction  it 
took  with  the  *Copernican  Revolution.' ^^ 
All  these  tendencies  are  significant,  and 
the  hst  is  not  exhaustive;  Nietzsche  is 
exercising  a  great  influence,  and  no  one,  I 
suppose,  would  call  him  a  successor  of  the 
apostles  of  modern  philosophy.  I  note 
all  these  movements  not  in  order  to  discuss 
them,  but  rather  to  point  out  that  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  philosophic  authority  at 
present,  nor  any  hkelihood  of  our  reaching 
it;  in  other  words,  no  body  of  principles 
to  which  all  students  adhere,  as  they  do  in 
the  special  sciences.  There  is  no  agree- 
ment among  those   who  reflect  on  these 


42     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

topics,  and  so  far  then  as  experience  goes, 
we  have  no  ground  for  trusting  that  the  un- 
illumined  reflections  of  the  human  reason, 
revolving  on  itself,  are  bringing  us  to  a 
knowledge  of  reality.  I  remember  some 
years  ago  asking  a  trained  philosopher 
whether  he  foresaw  the  prospect  of  any 
main  general  conclusions  on  the  part  of 
philosophers.  He  said  No.  At  that  time, 
more  or  less  obsessed  with  the  fashionable 
cult,  I  could  hardly  credit  his  words,  but 
now  I  see  what  he  meant. 

Thus,  then,  however  you  would  account 
for  it,  it  would  seem  a  simple  fact  of  obser- 
vation, that  there  is  some  "kink"  in  the 
human  logic  which  prevents  man  arriving 
at  the  true  knowledge  of  things  by  any 
exercise  of  his  rational  faculties  alone,  and 
that,  though  the  power  of  drawing  inferences 
is  universal.  So  far  as  we  can  observe 
the  history  of  these  attempts,  through  its 
whole  progress  there  is  but  one  conclusion, 
and  that  is  confirmed  by  the  existing  con- 
dition of  thought.  It  may  be  summed  up 
in  the  well  known  hues  of  Omar  Khayyam: 


ARMAGEDDON  43 

"Up  from  earth's  centre,  through  the  seventh  gate 
I  rose,  and  on  the  throne  of  Saturn  sate; 

And  many  a  knot  unravelled  by  the  road; 
But  not  the  master-knot  of  human  fate. 

"There  was  the  Door  to  which  I  found  no  key; 
There  was  the  veil  through  which  I  might  not  see: 

Some  little  talk  awhile  of  me  and  thee 
There  was  —  and  then  no  more  of  Thee  and  Me. 

"Earth  could  not  answer;  nor  the  seas  that  mourn 
In  flowing  purple,  of  their  lord  forlorn; 

Nor  rolling  Heaven;  with  all  His  signs  revealed 
And  hidden  by  the  sleeve  of  night  and  morn." 

However,  it  may  be  said  that  there  is 
general  agreement  to  adopt  a  purely  agnos- 
tic standpoint.  If  we  include  the  general 
level  of  educated  and  half -educated  people, 
this  would  be  nearer  the  truth.  As  a 
purely  philosophic  doctrine  agnosticism  is, 
of  course,  by  no  means  incompatible  with 
theistic  or  even  Christian  belief,  and  may 
make  a  very  good  basis  for  it.  Instances 
of  this  are  numerous;  one  of  the  most 
valuable  is  that  of  George  Romanes,  the 
great  man  of  science.  His  work,  Thoughts 
on  Religion,  illustrates  the  progress  of  the 
anima  naturaliter  Christiana  from  infidehty 
to  the  faith,  through  making  his  agnosti- 


44     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

cism  "pure";  that  is,  purging  it  of  pre- 
possessions on  either  side.  For  agnosticism 
need  be  no  more  than  an  assertion  that 
the  intellect  of  itself  is  incapable  of  em- 
bracing reality,  with  the  corollary  that  all 
our  knowledge  of  God  is  figurative  and 
provisional.  It  may  imply  the  belief  that 
the  ideahst  account  of  things  is  open  to 
grave  objection,  and  that  all  efforts  of  the 
mind  un-illuminated  by  revelation  lead  to 
failure.  This  is  very  much  the  use  put  to 
it  by  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour,  who  in  his 
Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt  and  the  more 
popular  Foundations  of  Belief  has  given 
us  some  admirable  criticism  both  of  the 
naturahst  and  the  idealist  accounts,  of  the 
world.  It  is  obvious  that  with  agnosticism 
so  "pure"  as  this,  there  is  no  ground  against 
—  there  may  be  very  much  reason  for  ac- 
cepting the  Christian  claim  that  our  knowl- 
edge of  God  is  mediated  through  His  Son's 
manifestation  in  human  life  and  can  be 
reached  in  no  other  way.  In  this  sense  of 
the  term,  not  only  great  moderns,  such  as 
''Newman"  and  "Pascal,"  but  even  the 
greater  schoolmen,  all  alike  maintain  that 
the  intellectual  reason  is  not  of  itseK  ade- 


ARMAGEDDON  45 

quate,  and  that  all  our  words  and  creeds 
are  but  metaphor;  that  our  knowledge  is, 
in  a  word,  analogical. 

Agnosticism,  however,  as  commonly  used 
today,  means  more  than  this.  It  is  a  par- 
ticular kind  of  gnosticism.  Its  practical 
meaning  is  similar  to  naturalism;  while 
theoretically  it  is  a  counsel  of  despair, 
which  cannot  be  maintained  by  beings 
born  to  act.  For  they  will  not  rest  in  the 
behef  that  reahty  is  unknowable,  ahke  to 
the  reason  and  every  other  faculty  of  the 
soul,  and  that  the  world  is  all  a  maya  of 
illusion.  That  is  the  one  real  hope  in  the 
West;  men  cannot  in  the  last  resort  but 
beheve  in  some  reahty;  I  might  add  that, 
even  taking  our  life  at  its  worst,  it  shews 
such  desire  for  free  personaUty,  even  if 
only  for  the  few,  that  there  is  less  danger 
than  appears  of  its  being  satisfied  with  the 
opiates  of  Pantheism,  At  least  we  find 
as  a  fact  that,  apart  from  those  immersed 
in  immediate  activity,  reflecting  men  hold 
less  and  less  to  a  truly  agnostic  position. 
It  always  tends  to  pass  into  its  opposite 
and  to  become  a  gnosticism,  whether  theistic 
or    the    reverse.    Herbert    Spencer's    own 


46     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

system  has  been  called  semi-theism,  and 
he  told  us  in  his  autobiography  that  as  he 
grew  older  he  became  less  hostile  to  insti- 
tutional religion.  Sidg wick's  agnosticism 
verged  on  theistic  faith,  just  as  in  others 
it  is  tantamount  to  atheism.  A  better 
instance  is  that  of  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson. 
Contemptuous  as  he  is  of  all  Christian 
ideals,  yet  in  his  books  on  "ReHgion"  he 
develops  a  doctrine  which  may  call  itself 
agnosticism,  but  is  in  reality  a  sort  of 
theism;  and  this  is  even  more  the  case  with 
the  dialogue  on  the  Meaning  of  Good, 

Of  agnosticism,  in  the  popular  sense, 
the  strength  has  been  and  is  not  philosophic 
thinking,  but  the  prejudice  from  natural 
science,  the  refusal  of  men  like  Huxley  to 
discern  any  ground  for  a  spirit  world  beyond. 
Even  this  attitude  is  changing.  Science 
tends  more  and  more  to  recognise  its  pro- 
visional and  purely  descriptive  character; 
further  it  is  being  driven  to  credit  as 
phenomena  facts  which  make  for  a  view 
of  the  world  as  spiritual  and  personal,  and 
destroy  the  hope  that,  with  a  little  more 
knowledge,  the  universe  could  be  summed 
up  in  a  series  of  differential  equations;   be- 


ARMAGEDDON  47 

cause  all  history  has  been  fixed  from  the 
outset,  and  at  any  moment  the  state  of 
the  world  might  be  mathematically  deduced 
from  that  just  preceding.  This  fatahsm  is 
the  one  and  only  postulate  irreconcilable 
with  the  Christian  faith. 

"  With  earth's  first  clay  thou  didst  the  last  man  knead, 
And  then  of  the  last  harvest  sow'd  the  seed: 

Yea  the  first  morning  of  Creation  wrote 
What  the  last  dawn  of  reckoning  shall  read." 

Were  this  indeed  the  case,  and  it  is  the 
assumption  of  all  who  disbeheve  the  mirac- 
ulous, we  need  not  discuss  the  Christian 
faith,  or  indeed  any  other,  which  appeals 
to  spiritual  freedom  and  treats  the  future 
as  not  determined.  Such  a  faith  in  that 
case  could  have  no  meaning,  neither  would 
human  hfe,  as  we  see  and  Uve  it  from  day 
to  day.  This  prejudice,  however,  is  break- 
ing against  the  rock  of  fact.  Natural 
science  is  becoming  in  the  true  sense  agnos- 
tic, and  recognises  that  it  can  speak  but 
of  phenomena  and  their  relations;  of  what 
is  behind  it  has  no  word  to  say,  one  way  or 
the  other.  In  so  far  as  observation  in- 
creases our  sense  of  the  cruelty  of  nature, 
it  may  increase  the  difficulty  of  believing 


48     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

in  the  Fatherhood  of  God.  Probably  the 
supreme  difficulty  of  theistic  religion  to 
most  minds  does  lie  in  this  doctrine  rather 
more  than  in  any  of  the  other  points.  But 
I  do  not  know  that  this  has  been  substan- 
tially increased  since  the  days  when  Tenny- 
son made  it  classical  in  his  indictment  of 
Nature  "red  in  tooth  and  claw  with  ravin," 
and  Mill  i^eveloped  the  same  thesis  in  prose. 
More  and  more,  too,  is  science  tending 
to  lay  stress  on  the  unique,  the  individual; 
and  more  and  more  does  that  tend  to  remove 
the  antecedent  objection  to  the  Christian 
revelation.  And  it  cannot  be  too  often 
repeated  that  it  is  the  antecedent  objection 
which  weighs  with  most  minds  and  is  at 
the  bottom  of  three  quarters  of  the  destruc- 
tive criticism.  Dr.  Karl  Pearson's  criti- 
cism of  the  Law  of  Causation  in  the  recent 
edition  of  his  Grammar  of  Science  ought  to 
leave  no  doubt  that  those  who  are  deterred 
from  admitting  the  force  of  the  evidence 
of  the  uniqueness  of  the  events  connected 
with  the  hfe  of  Jesus,  because  they  seem 
at  variance  with  some  imaginary  law,  are 
merely  frightened  by  a  bogie.  "As  far 
as  our  own  experience  goes,  nothing  in  the 


ARMAGEDDON  49 

universe   ever  will   exactly    repeat   itself; 

the  law  of   causation   is   a  useful 

conception,  but  in  no  sense  a  reality  lying 
as  a  bed  rock  below  phenomena."  ^^ 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  uprising  of 
psychology  is  teaching  us  many  things. 
Admitted  facts  Hke  those  of  thought  trans- 
ference and  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  sub- 
liminal self  serve  to  shew  that  our  personal 
life  reaches  deeper  than  we  suppose,  and 
give  us  hints  of  a  universe  whose  elements 
connect  themselves  in  a  way  that  is  incom- 
patible with  a  materiahstic  hypothesis. 
Mr.  Gerald  Balfour  has  recently  shewn  this 
to  be  the  case  in  regard  to  the  admitted 
cases  of  telepathy,  quite  apart  from  the 
more  doubtful  alleged  cases  of  "cross- 
correspondence."  Dr.  Jevons  has  further 
developed  the  point  that  the  facts  of  mind- 
cure  are  not  explained  by  giving  them  a 
name,  and  that  they  remain  unintelUgible 
except  on  a  spiritual  theory. 

The  new  developments  in  regard  to  a 
theory  of  matter,  while  they  certainly  do 
not  make  rehgious  behef  more  diflScult,  serve 
on  the  one  hand  to  favour  the  view  that  we 
know  very  Httle  about  the  constitution  of 

5 


50     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

the  material  world,  while  all  recent  research 
tends  to  shew  us  the  depth  of  mystery  that 
surrounds  the  subject  and  the  highly  specu- 
lative character  of  most  theories  in  regard 
to  its  nature. 

From  all  these  sides,  the  descriptive  nature 
of  science,  the  electronic  theory  of  matter, 
the  admitted  emphasis  on  the  unique  and 
individual,  the  strange  occurrences  now 
known  to  the  psychologist,  men  are  slowly 
moving  away  from  that  view  which  makes 
the  facts  of  Gospel  appear  incredible  because 
they  seem  to  conflict  with  certain  so-called 
laws,  which  are  never  more  than  observed 
uniformities  and  might  always  be  subject 
to  exceptions. 

As  M.  Bergson  says,  we  cannot  lay  down 
a  priori  the  impossibility  of  any  fact. 
Indeed,  in  regard  to  the  Gospel  facts,  it  is 
not  scientific  men,  but  "liberal"  theologians 
who  take  their  science  at  second  hand,  who 
tell  us  that  the  stories  of  the  Virgin  Birth 
and  the  Resurrection  body  are  certainly 
false.  Huxley,  for  instance,  professed  him- 
self quite  ready  to  believe  it,  if  he  had 
thought  the  evidence  sufficient.  It  is 
literary    critics    and    philosophers,    rather 


ARMAGEDDON  61 

than  men  of  science,  who  say  before- 
hand that  the  one  or  the  other  is  plainly 
impossible. 

Thus  the  prevailing  uncertainty  in  regard 
to  fundamental  principles  weakens  the 
force  of  any  and  all  the  systems  which 
compete  with  the  Christian  Church,  while 
the  recent  advances  in  scientific  thought 
have  lessened  the  current  objections.  For 
all  that,  the  great  obstacle  to  behef  among 
ordinary  minds  is  the  success  of  physical 
science;  the  achievements  in  the  practical 
world  that  have  issued  from  a  method  of 
enquiry  which  postulates  a  uniformity 
against  which  the  Christian  story  and  our 
sense  of  freedom  are  alike  in  conflict.  We 
are  learning  that  even  in  the  simplest 
facts  there  is  ever  a  mystery  at  the  last, 
a  point  at  which  you  can  only  say,  "Things 
are  so,"  "Blue  is  blue,  and  there's  an  end 
of  it."  As  men  see  this  and  as  they  see 
also  the  mysteries  involved  in  the  scientific 
projection  of  the  world,  and  concentrate 
attention  on  the  actual  facts  of  freedom 
and  the  realm  of  values,  and  as  they  fur- 
ther see  the  connection  between  the  postu- 
lates of  human  freedom  and  those  of  the 


52     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

miraculous  or  the  Divine  freedom;  so  will 
the  mirage  of  natural  uniformity  vanish, 
like  the  dream  it  is,  and  they  will  be  able 
to  place  themselves  before  the  light,  that 
shone  once  over  Bethlehem,  and  yield  to 
the  great  weight  of  evidence  that  points  to 
the  invasion  of  this  world  by  powers  from 
one  beyond. 

Apart  from  the  Christian  hope,  we  are 
in  a  state  of  chaos,  only  the  more  appalling 
that  it  seems  to  be  hardly  realised.  The 
chaos  is  all  the  greater  that  it  applies  not 
only  to  fundamental  doctrines,  but  to 
practical  ideals.  For  the  anarchy  of  specu- 
lative thought  is  almost  a  harmony  com- 
pared with  the  chaos  of  the  moral  ideals. 

In  the  last  century  the  world  could  still 
retain  Christian  ideals,  while  giving  up 
that  life  in  the  Church  which  alone  makes 
them  possible.  That  belief  has  been  shat- 
tered by  facts,  and  writers  of  the  older 
school  of  rationaUsts,  like  Gold  win  Smith, 
noted  and  lamented  this.  Here  and  there 
you  find  a  belated  Positivist  or  an  austere 
agnostic  holding  to  an  ideal  indistinguish- 
able from  the  Christian,  but  for  the  most 
part    the    non-Christian    no    longer    even 


ARMAGEDDON  53 

aflPects  to  take  Jesus  as  Master,  but  opposes, 
with  more  or  less  of  contempt  for  the 
founder,  the  whole  system  of  Christian 
morals.  I  will  not  dwell  on  the  great 
movement  of  which  Friedrich  Nietzsche 
was  the  mouthpiece,  although  I  beheve  it 
to  be  significant.  Its  glorification  of  pride, 
its  philosophy  of  cruelty  and  race  antago- 
nism are  a  shining  expression  of  the  spirit 
of  antichrist  and  of  the  practical  ideals  of 
many  men  who  would  be  shocked  at  the 
language  of  Nietzsche.  It  is  fair  to  say 
that  part  of  Nietzsche's  individuaUsm  had 
its  origin  in  a  wholesome  reaction  against 
the  pessimistic  ethical  sociahsm,  derived 
from  Schopenhauer  or  the  East,  which 
preaches  altruism  not  because  of  the  worth 
of,  but  because  of  the  (alleged)  unreahty 
of  the  individual.  Also  from  Nietzsche's 
polemic  against  arid  intellectuaHsm  there 
is  much  to  be  learnt,  and  from  his  general 
romantic  attitude.  At  the  same  time  his 
whole  contempt,  not  merely  of  the  Christian 
creed,  but  of  Christian  ethics,  is  undoubted 
and  cannot  be  lost  sight  of.  Moreover  it  is, 
in  this  respect,  as  incarnating  a  new  philos- 
ophy of  pride  and  reviving  ideas  essentially 


54     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

Pagan  that  he  has  his  greatest  vogue  — 
and  it  is  in  this  respect  that  his  disciples 
would  claim  to  be  "immorahsts,"  as 
opposed  to  the  whole  notion  of  ethics  which 
has  prevailed  for  two  thousand  years. 
This  is  discerned  to  be  the  true  inwardness 
of  the  conflict  between  the  ethics  of  Chris- 
tianity and  Nietzsche  by  a  writer  in  a  recent 
number  of  the  Hibbert  Journal^  Professor 
Otto  JuUus  Bierbaum,!^  in  an  interesting 
article  on  Dostoieffsky  and  Nietzsche,  from 
which  I  make  some  extracts.  It  is  indeed 
the  strongest  presumption  in  favour  of  the 
Divine  and  other-worldly  character  of  the 
Gospel  that  it  should  be  seen  to  be  dia- 
metrically opposed  in  outlook,  in  motive, 
and  practical  maxims  to  a  scheme  of  things 
avowedly  Pagan,  self-regarding,  and  this- 
worldly.  "I  speak  from  the  standpoint  of 
"one  to  whom  Nietzsche's  doctrine  of  the 
"  trans  valuation  of  all  values  is  something 
"  more  than  an  empty  phrase,  and  I  assume 
**that  it  indicates  the  direction  in  which  the 
**  most  potent  forces  of  Western  culture  are 
*' moving  today.  .  .  . 

"Even  if  it  be  conceded  that  the  spirit 
"  informing  him  is,  for  Russia,  fit  and  salu- 


ARMAGEDDON  55 

*  tary,  it  does  not  follow  that  it  is  the  same 

*  for  us.    We  to  whom  Dostoieffsky  remains 

*  at  bottom  a  stranger  are  not  bom  to  absorb  it; 

*  to  attempt  this  would  be  to  deny  Goethe  and 
'to  regard  Nietzsche  as  a  disease.  It  is  a 
'divergent  path  that  we  are  called  to  tread, 
'Our  wanderings  in  the  Catacombs  are  over, 

"Those  by  whom  this  doctrine  is  rejected 
'  (as  it  may  be  by  men  of  great  intellectual 

*  power)  should  welcome  Dostoieffsky  at 
*once  as  a  kindred  spirit;  for  in  him  Christ 

*  speaks,  and  we  must  go  back  very  far  in 
*the  history  of  the  Christian  faith  to  find 

*  one  in  whom  he  speaks  so  forcibly  as  here. 
*I  for  one  should  need  to  go  back  to  S. 

*  Francis  of  Assisi.  .  .  . 

"On  the  one  hand  we  have  Nietzsche 
'breaking  in  his  Zarathustra  the  tables  of 
'the  Mosaic  Law;  on  the  other  Dostoieffsky 

*  raising  up  out  of  the  depths  of  his  Russian 
'heart  the  primitive  Christ." 

If  you  take  other  non-Christian  teachers, 
like  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson,  it  is  easy  to  see 
how  entirely  they  repudiate  the  Christian 
ethic.  An  Oxford  tutor,  in  his  Religion  of  all 
Good  Men,  while  personally  doing  homage 
to  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  declares  the  whole 


66    CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

system  to  be  obsolete,  and  would  sub- 
stitute the  "Gothic"  ideal,  as  he  calls 
chivalry  —  the  ethical  simpUfication  of 
"gentlemanly  conduct."  20  Mr.  H.  G. 
Wells,  in  his  impressive  study.  First  and 
Last  Things,  has  told  us  that  the  per- 
sonality of  Jesus  does  not  appeal  to  him; 
while  of  the  book  which  has  united  Chris- 
tians of  every  obedience,  another  teacher 
from  Oxford,  Mr.  Henry  Sturt,^!  writes 
in  the  following  elegant  terms:  "Of  all  the 
terrible  intellectual  disasters  of  Europe 
the  Bible  has  been  by  far  the  greatest, 
mitigated  only  partially  by  the  wild  ro- 
mantic savagery  of  the  Old  Testament, 
by  the  sweet  natural  beauty  of  the  preach- 
ing of  Jesus,  and,  for  us,  by  the  old-time 
nobihty  of  our  Jacobean  translation.  What 
an  irreparable  injury  to  the  intellectual 
growth  of  England  that  week  by  week, 
for  centuries,  the  people  have  had  pre- 
sented to  them  'lessons'  from  the  records 
of  an  Arabian  tribe  unapproachably  distant 
in  culture,  in  national  sentiment,  and  in 
spiritual  aspirations.  Who  can  estimate 
the  degree  to  which  our  poetry  has  been 
stunted   and  starved,  our  national  genius 


ARMAGEDDON  57 

crushed,  our  history  cheapened  and  thrust 
out  of  sight  by  this  ahen  oppression? 
Scholars  have  sentimentalised  over  the 
desolation  of  Hellas  by  the  coarse,  ignorant 
tyranny  of  the  Turks.  Have  they  ever 
thought  of  the  ruin  these  ill-starred  Jewish 
scriptures  have  wrought  to  the  mind  of  the 
Teutonic  nations?"  It  is  not  as  though 
there  was  any  compensating  agreement 
about  the  fundamentals  of  morals.  Chris- 
tian chastity  is  condemned;  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  would  make  divorce  "as  cheap,  as 
easy,  and  as  secret  as  possible";  a  great 
novehst  was  for  treating  marriage  as  on 
the  system  of  a  leasehold  contract,  termi- 
nable at  intervals,  while  reputable  names 
can  be  found  defending  vices  which  even 
the  Pagans  condemned,  and  a  recent  his- 
torical writer  has  set  up  Heliogabalus  with 
all  his  nameless  vices  as  a  mark  of  modern 
admiration. 22  Of  course  many  would  hold 
to  an  austere  view  of  morals  quite  apart 
from  rehgion;  others  would  recommend 
no  more  than  "manly"  hberahty.  But 
whatever  they  may  approve,  they  are  at 
variance  with  the  Christian  notion  of 
marriage,   and  our  novels  and  plays  and 


58     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

popular  agitations  bear  witness  to  a  chaos 
in  moral  ideals.  This  hopeless  floundering 
in  all  men's  notions  of  right  and  wrong  may 
be  partly  due  to  the  strange  complexities 
of  our  day,  but  it  is  more  often  the  result 
of  the  breaking  down  of  all  barriers  to  the 
individual  caprice  and  of  the  preaching  of 
a  doctrine  of  "living  one's  own  Hfe,"  which 
leaves  a  man  or  woman  —  for  the  evil  is 
largely  there  —  with  no  stars  in  heaven  to 
steer  by.  For  "God  hath  made  man  up- 
right, but  he  hath  found  out  many  inven- 
tions." A  society  which  leaves  God  out 
of  the  reckoning  in  all  matters  of  family 
and  sexual  intercourse  is  bound  direct  for 
the  rocks.  At  this  moment  indeed  it  is 
the  ethic  of  Christianity  which  is  more 
unpopular  than  the  creed.  It  hinders  the 
free  development  of  the  individual  in  regard 
to  society,  or  it  is  disliked  as  ascetic 
and  unnatural  in  regard  to  the  private  life; 
and  in  business  relations  it  is  rejected  on 
principle  as  mere  sentimentahsm. 

This  is  all  very  natural.  The  firmest 
believer  in  Christ  finds  his  ideal  so  far  be- 
yond his  practice  that  it  is  very  unlikely 
that  an  unbeliever  should  retain  a  thing 


ARMAGEDDON  59 

SO  difficult;  while  the  balance  between 
egoism  and  altruism  is  so  hard  to  strike 
in  theory  that  the  Christian  Church  is  the 
only  society  in  which  a  fair  mean  can  be 
had,  and  apart  from  hfe  therein  we  should 
anticipate  what  we  actually  have,  an  oscil- 
lation between  capricious  individuahsm,  or 
an  altruism  no  less  irrational. 

So  far  as  we  Christians  are  concerned, 
it  is  the  ethical  antagonism  which  is  the 
more  important.  Nietzsche  with  his  in- 
sight saw  that  here  was  the  crux.  So  long 
as  men  go  on  admiring  Jesus  and  making 
Him  their  ideal,  no  good  will  come  from 
disproving  the  Gospel  history.  Somehow 
or  other  men  will  hold  to  a  system  funda- 
mentally Christian  and  will  adopt  practi- 
cally, if  not  theoretically,  an  attitude  of 
worship.  They  will  act  in  a  way  which 
logically  imphes  the  system  which  in  theory 
they  have  rejected.  If  they  are  finally  to 
be  cut  loose  from  the  Christian  Church, 
they  must  be  taught  to  trample  on  the 
Christian  ideal.  And  so  Nietzsche  set 
himself  to  develop  the  taunt  of  the  rejecting 
Jews  at  our  Lord,  "He  hath  a  devil." 
Since  many  men,  as  a  fact,  hve  an  anti- 


60     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

Christian  life,  he  only  drew  out  what  was 
implied  therein.  That  is  one  reason  of  his 
influence.  He  made  an  idol  of  the  deeds 
of  "bloodthirsty  and  cruel  men." 

Perhaps  I  may  seem  to  exaggerate  the 
chaos  of  existing  beliefs.  Rather  I  believe 
that  I  underrate  it.  So  far  as  concerns 
that  world  called  educated  or  specifically 
modern,  the  anarchy  is  greater,  not  less, 
than  I  portray.  The  fact  is  disguised  from 
us  by  the  presence  amongst  us  of  classes 
who  cling  by  instinct  to  the  old  faith. 
What  I  am  thinking  of  is  the  seething 
cauldron  of  this  modern  world,  not  those 
who,  whether  by  fortune  or  choice,  live  in 
a  backwater.  Barchesters  still  exist,  but 
we  do  not  live  there.  In  the  world  where 
we  do  live,  every  kind  of  current  and  cross- 
current is  flowing  at  this  moment,  or  as 
one  man  put  it,  "the  pavement  is  up  in  all 
directions";  "for  in  those  days  there  was 
no  king  in  Israel  and  every  man  did  that 
which  was  right  in  his  own  eyes." 

I  have  been  trying  to  shew  that,  while 
as  a  fact  the  intellectual  atmosphere  of  our 
day  is  unfavourable  to  the  Christian  Church, 


ARMAGEDDON  61 

yet  this  is  merely  a  fact,  the  result  of  one- 
sided development.  It  is  no  more  decisive 
than  was  the  prejudice  of  the  philosophic 
schools  of  Rome  or  Alexandria  in  the  first 
century.  The  modern  prejudice  has  been 
created  by  the  predominance  of  a  single 
method,  triumphant  in  its  own  sphere,  and 
the  attempt  to  carry  it  into  regions  where 
it  is  powerless.  This  method  has  unduly 
influenced  certain  critics  and  historians, 
who  have  taken  their  science  for  granted; 
unaware  of  the  reserves  made  by  the 
greater  physicists,  they  have  treated  as 
rigid  laws  what  are  mere  facts  of  normal 
happening  and  have  started  to  reconstruct 
the  New  Testament  or  the  history  of  the 
Christian  Church,  with  certain  classes  of 
events  ruled  out  a  priori  as  incredible. 
The  same  prejudices  have  operated  to  the 
detriment  of  history,  by  creating  a  bias 
in  favour  of  arranging  it  all  on  a  schematic 
basis  as  the  result  of  inevitable  laws, 
omitting  all  but  a  meagre  reference  to  the 
vast  changes  wrought  by  persons;  that  is, 
by  spiritual  beings. 

From  many  sides,  however,  these  views 
have  been  attacked.    The  limits  of  intel- 


62     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

lectual  reasoning  have  been  analysed  by 
writers  like  Bergson,  certainly  not  from 
any  bias  towards  the  Christian  Faith. 
There  is  no  longer  a  united  front  or  anything 
like  it  on  the  part  of  the  non-Christian 
world.  It  is  as  variegated  as  the  religions 
of  Asia.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  Armaged- 
don; we  may  keep  the  faith,  but  we  must 
fight  for  it.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  is  but  one 
of  many  scientific  men  who  bid  us  remember 
the  limitations  of  all  purely  mechanical 
interpretations  23;  while  another  scientific 
observer,  Dr.  McDougall,  has  just  pub- 
lished a  volume,  Mind  and  Soul,  designed 
to  resuscitate  once  more  the  old-fashioned 
belief  in  the  individual  soul  which  some  had 
told  us  had  vanished  forever  from  the  world 
of  "enlightenment." 

Neither  in  fundamental  matters  of 
thought,  nor  in  ideals  of  practice,  is  there 
any  body  of  principles  accepted  in  the 
main  by  reflecting  men  or  any  probabiHty 
of  such  arising.  On  the  contrary  we  live 
amid  a  greater  intellectual  and  moral  chaos 
than  has  ever  been  known  in  history.  This 
cannot  continue. ^^  A  civiHsation  to  endure 
will  have  to  mean  something,  and  "projected 


ARMAGEDDON  68 

efficiency"  will  not  satisfy  any  race  which 
considers  its  latter  end.  Against  the  disso- 
lution which  is  otherwise  in  store  for  us, 
there  is  nothing  to  stand  but  the  life  of  the 
Christian  Church.  The  existing  anarchy 
renders  it  not  less  but  more  probable  that 
there  alone  can  the  needs  of  human  nature 
be  satisfied.  HostiHty  indeed  is  open  and 
contemptuous,  yet  there  is  nothing  to 
inhibit  our  faith.  The  ApoUyons  of  modern 
knowledge  are  only  bogies.  Neither  from 
the  side  of  natural  science,  nor  from  phi- 
losophy, nor  from  ethics  is  there  any  voice 
so  clear  or  authoritative  as  to  bear  any 
weight  beyond  an  individual  appeal;  while 
there  is  nothing  proved,  no  principle  even 
probable,  which  stands  in  the  way  of 
Christian  Faith.  There  is  no  a  'priori 
obstacle  to  the  faith,  provided  that  it  seem 
on  other  grounds  to  he  reasonable.  Such 
grounds  are  to  be  found  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment experience,  as  solid  with  the  hfe  of 
the  Church  and  the  inward  witness  of  the 
behever.  For  there  she  is,  the  Christian 
Church  seared  with  the  sins  of  all  the  cen- 
turies, bearing  the  memory  not  only  of  the 
saints,  a  Saint  Francis,  a  Father  Damien,  a 


64     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

Fenelon,  a  Bishop  Brent,  but  also  of  the 
Renaissance  Popes,  the  eighteenth  century 
prelates,  the  persecutors,  the  time-servers; 
still  she  goes  on.  Here  in  our  midst  is  the 
society,  which  claims  to  have  the  gathered 
experience  of  the  race,  still  to  keep  the 
flame  burning,  no  philosopher's  dream  or 
far-off  hope,  but  a  life  with  the  scars  no 
less  than  the  strength  of  reahty;  still  she 
comes  before  us  and  asks.  Can  you  do  with- 
out me?  Is  this  glad  new  life  for  which 
all  seek  to  be  had  within  me,  or  must  men 
seek  it  elsewhere?  "Art  thou  He  that 
should  come  or  do  we  look  for  another?"  25 


LECTURE  II 
BABYLON  OR  THE  MORAL  CRISIS 

The  Post-Impressionists  have  lately  been 
the  theme  of  much  talk.  We  are  not  here 
to  canvass  the  artistic  merit  of  this  strange 
new  school  of  painting.  But  the  move- 
ment means  a  good  deal.  By  authorities 
Hke  Mr.  Roger  Fry  and  Mr.  C.  J.  Holmes 
we  have  learnt  something  of  its  aims.  We 
are  shewn  how  it  witnesses  partly  to  that 
Oriental  influence  which  has  been  pouring 
in  upon  Western  art  ever  since  Japan  was 
discovered,  and  partly  to  that  cult  of  the 
primitive  which  has  been  growing  every 
year.  Here  is  a  deliberate  effort  to  step 
back  into  the  child's  view  of  the  natural 
world  and  to  thrust  away  the  lie  of  the 
photographic  artist,  which,  rendering  every 
detail,  obscures  the  whole  truth  and  sacri- 
fices colour  and  line  to  what  is  at  bottom 
mere  mechanism.    It  represents  a  desire 

6  65 


66     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS-ROADS 

to  get  away  from  our  sophisticated  world 
to  one  simpler.  No  longer  shall  the  artist 
be  controlled  by  the  desire  of  accurate 
presentation  of  detail;  rather  by  sugges- 
tion and  subtle  arrangement  shall  he  call 
up  those  impressions  fitting  avowedly  the 
scene,  and  wed  his  own  imagination  to  that 
of  the  spectator.  Mr.  Roger  Fry,  in  an 
illuminating  article,  describes  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  movement  as  follows: 

"Again  and  again  have  attempts  been 
made  by  artists  to  regain  this  freedom  of 
imaginative  appeal,  but  the  attempts  have 
been  hitherto  tainted  by  archaism.  Now 
at  last  artists  can  use  with  perfect  sincerity 
means  of  expression  which  have  been  denied 
them  ever  since  the  Renaissance.  And  this 
is  no  isolated  phenomenon  confined  to  the 
little  world  of  professional  painters;  it  is 
one  of  many  expressions  of  a  great  change 
in  our  attitude  to  life.  We  have  passed 
in  our  generation  through  what  looks  like 
the  crest  of  a  long  progression  in  human 
thought,  one  in  which  the  scientific  or 
mechanical  view  of  the  universe  was  ex- 
ploited for  all  its  possibilities.  How  vast 
and  on  the  whole  how  desirable  those  possi- 


BABYLON  67 

bilities  are  is  undeniable,  but  this  effort 
has  tended  to  blind  our  eyes  to  other 
reaUties  —  the  reaUties  of  our  spiritual 
nature  and  the  justice  of  our  demand  for 
its  gratification.  Art  has  suffered  in  this 
process,  since  art,  like  rehgion,  appeals  to 
the  non-mechanical  parts  of  our  nature, 
to  what  in  us  is  mystic  and  vital.  It  seems 
to  me,  therefore,  impossible  to  exaggerate 
the  importance  of  this  movement  in  art, 
which  is  destined  to  make  the  sculptors'  and 
painters'  endeavour  once  more  contermi- 
nous with  the  whole  range  of  human  aspi- 
ration and  desire." 

I  am  not  asking  how  far  these  men  are 
right  or  wrong;  the  point  is  that  they  exist. 
Here  in  one  important  sphere,  with  interests 
quite  other  than  rehgious,  men  are  seen  in 
deliberate  revolt  against  the  mental  habit 
of  the  Western  world,  as  it  has  developed 
itseff  since  the  Renaissance.  Elsewhere 
we  can  also  trace  a  similar  sense  of  its 
limitation.  It  is  deliberately  controverted 
by  an  architectural  genius  like  Mr.  R.  A. 
Cram,i  whom  I  need  not  in  this  place  do 
more  than  mention.  In  the  Irish  literary 
movement,  in  the  verse  and  criticism  of 


68     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats,  in  the  plays  of  Lady 
Gregory,  above  all  in  dramas  like  Synge's 
Riders  of  the  Sea  and  The  Play  Boy  of  the 
Western  World,  the  same  spirit  manifests 
itself,  and  it  finds  conscious  expression,  in 
regard  to  language  in  the  latter's  preface. 
There  he  points  out  the  evil  that  has  been 
done  to  the  rich  suggestiveness  and  sym- 
bolism, in  other  words  the  "sacramental" 
element  in  language,  by  the  whole  modern 
mechanical  method,  which  uses  words  like 
the  symbols  of  a  typewriter.  We  can  see 
the  tendency  far  back  in  "Tiger,  tiger 
burning  bright"  and  the  whole  anschauung 
of  William  Blake,  and  much  that  has  been 
written  about  the  "Renascence  of  Wonder" 
bears  on  it.  All  these  movements  start 
from  the  assumption  that  the  calculable, 
mechanical  aspects  of  life  have  been  given 
undue  prominence  in  the  West  and  that 
poetic,  if  not  ethical,  salvation  is  to  be 
found  by  leaving  it;  in  a  word  we  are  to 
"repent  and  become  as  Httle  children" 
in  the  service  of  beauty,  no  less  than  in 
that  of  God.  For  of  course  those  move- 
ments have  nothing  directly  to  do  with  the 
Christian   Faith.    Their   protagonists    are 


BABYLON  69 

often  its  bitterest  opponents.  Yet  all  are 
fighting  the  same  battle  with  the  vulgarities 
and  mechanical  categories  of  commercialised 
Europe;  all  are  on  the  side  of  spirit  and 
freedom  against  Phihstinism  and  mammon 
worship.  All  in  a  sense  are  other-worldly 
and  despise  the  tokens  of  the  day;  all,  if 
triumphant,  will  lead  to  a  "transvaluation 
of  all  values."  People  may  be  spiritually 
akin,  without  knowing  it  or  Uking  to 
acknowledge  the  fact  when  they  are  told. 
As  was  said  by  one  of  them: 

"For  thou  art  gone  away  from  earth, 
And  place  with  those  dost  claim, 
The  children  of  the  Second  Birth, 
Whom  the  world  could  not  tame; 

"And  with  that  small  transfigured  band 
Whom  many  a  different  way 
Conducted  to  this  common  land. 
Thou  learn'st  to  think,  as  they. 

"  Christian  or  Pagan,  King  and  slave, 
Soldier  and  Anchorite, 
Distinctions  we  esteem  so  grave. 
Are  nothing  in  their  sight. 

"They  do  not  ask,  who  pined  unseen, 
Who  was  on  action  hurled 
Whose  one  bond  is,  that  all  have  been 
Unspotted  by  the  world."* 


(70    CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

All  these  things,  Uke  the  romantic  move- 
ment in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  are 
evidences  of  a  change  of  spirit  which  in- 
cludes a  rehgious  aspect,  but  is  in  reaHty 
wider.  Our  Lord's  bidding  to  His  friends 
to  take  no  thought  of  the  morrow,  to  be 
like  children,  and  to  consider  the  lihes 
and  to  copy  the  birds,  is  curiously  akin 
to  this  latest  utterance  of  a  technique  that 
has  swung  full  circle;  only  it  reaches 
further.  Christianity  is  not  less,  but  ten 
thousand  times  more  revolutionary  than 
people  think.  That  jaded  middle-aged  so- 
ciety of  the  Pagan  Empire  did  well  to  see 
in  the  Church  its  foe,  and  to  persecute  a 
living  spirit  with  the  gift  of  Eternal  youth. 
Some  tell  us  now  that  Jesus  proclaimed  a 
social  gospel.  So  He  did.  But  it  was 
not  that  of  Karl  Marx  or  Henry  George 
or  any  legislator.  He  came  to  upset  the 
whole  scale  of  values,  and  by  changing  men's 
desires  to  inaugurate  a  new  epoch.  At  this 
moment  there  would  be  few  wrongs  in  the 
distribution  of  wealth  if  people  ceased  to 
want  more  than  is  good  for  them.  Jesus  came 
to  alter  men's  wants.  The  real  economic 
reformer  is  not  the  man  who  alters  the  laws. 


BABYLON  71 

but  he  who  changes  the  wants  of  a  suffi- 
ciently large  number  of  people  to  affect  the 
markets.  Consider  how  great  a  reformer 
was  Peter  the  Hermit.  He  made  more 
difference  than  many  legislators.  So  does 
any  effective  preacher  of  standards  above 
the  common.  There  would  be  fewer  harlots 
if  the  great  majority  of  men  even  tried  to 
Uve  pure  hves;  while  the  appalHng  inequaU- 
ties  of  our  day  would  vanish  as  by  magic  if 
a  sufficient  number  of  men  were  to  leave  off 
"making  haste  to  be  rich"  and  a  sufficient 
number  of  women  were  to  "set  their  affec- 
tions on  things  above."  The  world  improves 
slowly,  because  nearly  everyone  overvalues 
material  goods.  That  is  the  main  cause^ 
of  unjust  laws,  of  economic  wrong,  and 
nearly  all  tyranny  —  not  the  only  cause,  X 
but  in  our  day  the  chief  one,  except  sheer 
stupidity.  Any  change  of  men's  ideals  in 
this  respect  would  at  once  lead  to  improve- 
ment. 

As  I  said  in  the  first  lecture,  the  world 
of  the  Middle  Ages  was  anything  but  an 
ideal  place,  and  those  best  off  were  with- 
out our  comforts.  It  was  a  rough  and 
cruel    world    of    tumbhng,    quarrelsome. 


\ 


72    CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

naughty,  joyous,  and  rather  dirty  children. 
Its  tears  and  its  laughter,  its  hopes  and 
its  solemnities,  still  live,  not  only  in  our 
chroniclers  or  poets,  but  more  universally 
in  those  majestic  piles,  which  not  even  the 
throned  scoundrel  who  destroyed  the  Abbeys 
could  quite  avail  to  shatter.  These  places 
witness  to  two  things  —  men's  faith  alike 
in  God  and  in  man.  The  two  go  together. 
Either  the  whole  world,  seen  no  less  than 
unseen,  is  conceived  as  personal,  spiritual, 
aUve,  ever  fresh  so  that 

"New  every  morning  is  the  Love 
Our  wakening  and  uprising  prove"; 

or  else  it  is  seen  as  mechanical,  impersonal, 
dead,  with  human  history  unrolling  itself, 
like  a  cinematograph.  The  one  is  the 
world  of  Cathohc  Christianity,  the  other 
that  of  Pagan  philosophy  or  scientific 
fatalism  and  its  more  spiritual  or  at  least 
decorative  variety  —  Pantheism. 

It  is  not  doubtful  that,  if  we  were  asked 
to  name  a  material  symbol  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  we  should  point  to  Rouen  Cathedral 
or  Durham  or  to  some  great  monastery 
church,  like  Westminster  or  Selby  or  Peter- 


BABYLON  73 

borough.  To  many  who  know  nothing  else 
about  those  days,  these  form  the  only 
conscious  Hnk,  the  one  legacy  of  the  past. 
As  John  Ruskin  said  in  words  which  those 
who  have  once  read  them  find  it  hard  to 
forget: 

"They  are  the  only  witnesses  perhaps 
that  remain  to  us  of  the  faith  and  fear  of 
nations.  All  else  for  which  the  builders 
sacrificed  has  passed  away  —  all  their  Uving 
interests  and  aims  and  achievements.  We 
know  not  for  what  they  laboured,  and  we 
see  no  evidence  of  their  reward.  Victory, 
wealth,  authority,  happiness  —  all  have 
departed,  though  bought  by  many  a  bitter 
sacrifice.  But  of  them  and  their  life  and 
their  toil  upon  the  earth,  one  reward,  one 
evidence  is  left  us  in  these  grey  heaps  of 
deep-wrought  stone.  They  have  taken  with 
them  to  the  grave  their  powers,  their  hon- 
ours, and  their  errors;  but  they  have  left 
us  their  adoration." » 

There  were,  of  course,  many  other  sides 
to  medieval  hfe.  Then,  as  now,  greed  and 
cruelty  and  lust  claimed  their  victims.  But 
its  distinctive  note  is  the  effort  to  treat  all 
human  actions  from  the  standpoint  of  the 


74     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

other  world.  That  was  its  standard  of 
value.  Its  unity  is  the  unity  of  a  band  of 
pilgrims  struggling  hardly  home;  its  tender- 
ness and  intimacy  are  the  smiling  tears  of 
a  soul  that  is  glad  by  a  great  forgiveness; 
its  humour  is  the  wholesome  universal  play 
of  those  who  are  untroubled  by  all  the 
storms  and  undismayed  by  bereavement, 
because  they  know  that  a  man  may  feel 
that: 

"Love  is  and  was  my  king  and  lord 
And  shall  be  though  as  yet  I  keep 
Within  his  courts  on  earth  and  sleep 
Encompassed  by  his  faithful  guard, 

"And  hear  at  times  the  sentinel, 

That  moves  about  from  place  to  place 
And  whispers  through  the  worlds  ©f  space 
In  the  deep  night  that  all  is  well." 

Even  the  ideal  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire 
was  the  grandest  ideal  that  men  have  set 
before  them  in  statecraft,  and  though  it 
was  broken  up  under  the  passion  and  the 
pride  of  man,  we  need  not  suppose  that  the 
vast  unity  of  all  human  and  divine  affairs 
as  seen  in  the  vision  of  Dante  is  a  thing  to 
be  despised  by  a  different  age. 

For  it  is  different.    Let  us  not  forget 


BABYLON  75 

that.  The  statecraft,  the  economics,  the 
education,  the  hterature,  the  social  and 
family  life  of  our  day  are  organised  on  a 
basis  frankly  secular.  So  far  as  these 
things  are  concerned,  we  might  almost  say 
that  God  does  not  count.  Consequently 
it  is  the  symbols  of  material  possession  that 
are  alone  striking  in  the  world  of  today. 
For  that  very  reason  there  is  less  of  monu- 
mental expression,  for  men  intent  on  money- 
making  erect  buildings  only  for  utiHtarian 
ends.  If,  however,  any  one  such  thing 
could  represent  our  world  of  today  to 
Macaulay's  New  Zealander  I  suppose  it 
would  be  the  Stock  Exchange.  That  is  the 
true  centre  of  the  interests  of  the  vast 
majority  today,  excepting  small  groups 
apart  from  the  main  current.  To  many 
others  it  would  be  the  factory  or  the 
mill. 

To  that  end  its  universities  and  all  its 
education  is  more  and  more  being  directed. 
Attacks  of  daily  increasing  virulence  are 
made  directly  on  those  studies  which  do 
not  lead  directly  to  money-getting.  Not 
long  since  some  business  men  went  to  the 
Vice-Chancellor    of    a    certain    University 


76     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

and  asked  him  to  guarantee  that  if  they 
sent  their  sons  to  take  a  certain  course 
on  commercial  topics  they  would  become 
wealthy  men.  Physical  science  is  indeed 
valued,  but  mainly  because  it  is  hoped  to  in- 
crease the  chances  of  money-making.  Take 
the  Western  world  through,  and  what  unity 
can  you  find  either  in  religion  or  thought 
or  practical  ideals  except  the  desire  for 
riches.'^    I  think  I  am  not  exaggerating. 

Some  one  said  to  me  here  the  other  day, 
"You  cannot  imagine  the  degree  to  which 
we  are  materialized;  every  servant  girl 
cherishes  hopes  of  being  one  day  a  society 
queen."  Of  course  the  love  of  money  is 
not  new,  but  the  absorption  in  it  of  seventy- 
five  per  cent  of  human  energy  is,  I  think, 
new.  More  and  more  people  are  ill-con- 
tent with  a  competence  and  are  snatching 
at  the  means  of  ostentation.  What  has 
been  euphemistically  called  the  democrati- 
sation  of  society  has  meant  in  practice  the 
crushing  out  of  all  standards  save  that  of 
wealth,  so  that  people  openly  boast  that 
"they  judge  a  man  by  his  balance  at  the 
bank";  and  many  more  do  so  while  hardly 
aware  of  it.    I  heard  a  woman  of  historic 


BABYLON  77 

name,  dwelling  in  a  way  that  might  seem 
beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice,  declare 
that  she  had  asked  her  agent,  "Oh  when 
shall  I  be  rich,  Mr.  Smith?"  Every  form 
of  luxury  has  increased,  with  the  result  that 
those  who  have  enough  are  always,  hke 
OHver  Twist,  "asking  for  more,"  while  so 
many  people  are  living  beyond  their  income 
that  the  need  of  money  is  breaking  down 
still  further  the  barriers  of  honour  and 
fair-deahng.  It  is  the  mad  race  for  wealth 
that  is  the  real  cause  of  men's  dishke  of 
religion.  For  Christianity  can  in  no  way 
be  got  to  fit  with  such  a  scheme  of  hfe,  and 
hence  it  is  left  out.  Driven  by  this  whip, 
men  are  abandoning  all  scruple,  and  meth- 
ods grow  daily  in  favour,  which  even  half  a 
century  ago  would  have  seemed  less  than 
honest.  "The  great  god  success"  is  de- 
scribed in  an  American  novel  as  the  one 
goal  on  which  all  are  agreed,  and  some  one 
said  to  me  the  other  day,  when  I  demurred, 
to  his  admiration  of  a  set  of  people,  that 
they  were  scoundrels,  "Ah,  yes,  but  they 
get  there."  This  aim,  whether  you  call  it 
avarice,  or  the  love  of  power,  or  the  pas- 
sion for  conquest,  has  always  dominated 


78     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

many.  But  it  has  not  always  been  wor- 
shipped without  reserve.  Since  the  days 
of  that  majestic  embodiment  of  human 
pride,  the  Roman  Empire,  when  S.  John 
bewailed  "the  lust  of  the  flesh,  and  the 
lust  of  the  eyes  and  the  pride  of  life," 
material  standards  have  never  ruled  with 
such  general  acquiescence,  as  they  do  now. 
The  Middle  Ages  had  "their  forestallers 
and  regraters,"  but  they  did  not  call  them 
"kings  of  finance."  Even  a  Renaissance 
despot,  though  he  embodied  a  similar  ideal, 
had  commonly  either  political  genius  or 
artistic  culture.     If  men  did  not  copy,  at 

**least  they  canonized  S.  Francis.  Nowa- 
days the  police  would  lock  him  up  for 
sleeping  in  the  open. 

***  However,  it  is  hard  to  say  anything  on 
this  topic  without  becoming  either  com- 
monplace or  exaggerated.  Let  me  leave 
it  with  one  illustration. 

There  died  last  year  a  sovereign  who, 
though  not  a  great  statesman,  has  left 
behind  him  a  memory  that  will  not  die. 
Leopold,  king  of  the  Belgians,  had  many  of 
the  gifts  of  the  Emperor  Nero,  without 
his  artistic  taste.    To  the  powers  of  the 


BABYLON  79 

efficient  man  of  business  he  added  habits 
in  moral  matters  which  were  overacted 
rather  than  novel;  while  his  notions  of 
family  affection  might  have  been  learned 
at  the  court  of  Herod  the  Great.  He 
developed  the  resources  of  his  people  (in- 
cluding the  casino  of  Ostend).  At  length 
he  persuaded  the  states  of  the  West  to 
unite  in  a  scheme  which  should  carry  to 
a  backward  race  the  blessings  of  civilised 
existence.  What  those  blessings  are  can 
be  found  in  many  official  documents  or 
pictured  for  the  casual  reader  by  Stac- 
poole's  Pools  of  Silence,  Recently  I  received 
an  invitation  to  invest  money  in  some 
Congo  rubber  company  on  the  ground  that 
"the  sensational  fortune  of  King  Leopold 
had  a  meaning."  It  had.  His  decease, 
so  lamentable  to  that  race  to  whom  in  his 
own  words  he  was  teaching  "the  sanctity 
of  labour,"  was  discussed  at  some  length 
by  the  press  of  that  city,  which  has  ever 
regarded  itself  as  the  metropolis  of  modern 
culture.  They  praised  the  dead  monarch 
and  enlarged  on  his  abilities,  apparently 
regarding  as  one  ground  of  their  admiration 
his  admitted  lack  of  scruple.    All  this  I 


80     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

quote,  not  because  I  wish  to  add  one  more 
curse  to  one  who  hears  already  the  cries 
of  a  murdered  people,  but  because  it  illus- 
trates the  spirit  of  modern  civilisation  with 
little  infusion  from  earlier  influences.  The 
combination  of  greed,  lust,  and  success, 
this  is  what  moves  the  reverence  of  the 
Parisian  journalists  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
1910;  this  is  the  ideal  held  up  to  the  enter- 
prising citizens  —  who  are  not  princes.  Is  it 
for  this  and  such  like  examples  that  we  are 
invited  to  treat  the  Bible  as  pernicious, 
or  gird  at  the  epileptic  ecstacies  of  S. 
Taul?  For  remember  that  King  Leopold 
did  not  differ,  except  in  fortune,  from  many 
unknown  makers  of  miUions  and  many 
more  who  would  like  to  make  them.  It 
was  not  that  his  morals  were  worse,  but 
that  his  success  was  greater,  not  that  his 
aims  were  low,  but  that  his  place  was  high, 
that  won  for  him  a  renown  so  fragrant. 
Every  man  or  woman  who  invests  money 
with  the  single  aim  of  dividends,  irrespec- 
tive of  means,  is  guilty  potentially  of  the 
same  crimes.  In  a  debate  before  the 
introduction  of  Chinese  labour,  one  mem- 
ber of  Parliament  declared  that  there  was 


BABYLON  81 

one  paramount  need,  that  of  getting  gold 
out  of  the  Rand.  The  moment  such  a 
spirit  rules,  the  horrors  of  the  Congo  are 
bound  to  arise,  given  the  conditions.  In- 
deed, if  accounts  be  trustworthy,  the  same 
is  true  of  places  like  the  Valle  Nacional  of 
Mexico  and  of  many  systems  of  so-called 
peonage;  just  as  it  was  true  in  the  factory 
system  of  England  before  child  labour  was 
regulated,  in  spite  of  a  chorus  of  shrieks  on 
the  part  of  the  rich  manufacturers,  led  by 
John  Bright.  None  of  these  things  could 
go  on  were  it  not  for  the  morbid  lust  of 
men  to  secure  the  utmost  material  gain  at 
the  lowest  cost  and  to  set  aside  every 
consideration  of  the  workers'  interests. 
For  the  evil  does  not  he  in  the  forced  labour, 
nor  in  the  tutelage  of  the  child  races  (both 
probably  necessary),  but  comes  from  thrust- 
ing out  all  consideration  for  the  labourer, 
as  a  person,  and  treating  him  as  a  Uving 
tool,  in  a  worse  condition  than  were  slaves 
in  the  Roman  Empire.  There  is  the  root 
of  the  matter.  You  may  even  have  the 
fullest  poUtical  freedom  and  prohibit  per- 
sonal violence  to  an  absurd  degree,  and  yet 
get  results  not  radically  dissimilar,  provided 


82     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

you  make  wealth  your  sole  object  and  all 
thought  of  means  be  set  aside. 

Dr.  Bussell  declares  with  truth  this 
point:  "Emancipation  on  two  continents 
sacrificed  the  real  welfare  of  the  slave  and 
his  intrinsic  worth  as  a  person,  to  the 
impatient  vanity  of  an  immediate  and 
theatrical  triumph."* 

So  it  is  with  our  modern  freedom  and  the 
rights  of  the  individual.  No  master  would 
venture  nowadays  to  discipline  an  appren- 
tice of  sixteen  years,  as  the  rich  pay  for 
their  sons  to  be  disciplined;  for  we  have 
carried  freedom  of  the  person  to  the  point 
of  insanity,  and  daily  witness  irate  parents 
bringing  ridiculous  charges  against  ele- 
mentary schoolmasters  for  employing  in  the 
mildest  way  discipline  that  everyone  who 
has  been  through  it  at  an  English  public 
school  admits  to  be  wholesome.  This  is 
one  reason  why  a  certain  type  of  boy  in 
the  slums  can  never  be  made  anything  of, 
unless  he  be  got  into  the  navy.  But  on 
the  other  hand  any  employe  may  be  dis- 
missed to  starve  in  the  streets  at  almost  a 
moment's  notice.  You  remember  the  story 
of  Mr.  Wells'  Kipps;  how  a  youth  is  thrown 


BABYLON  83 

upon  the  world,  without  a  moment's  hesi- 
tation, for  an  offence  which  was  certainly 
not  serious;  and  it  is  alleged  that  in  some 
of  the  larger  stores  the  sHghtest  complaint 
leads  to  immediate  dismissal.  These  in- 
stances serve  to  illustrate  the  fact  that  it 
is  not  for  the  sentimental  pampering  of 
the  negro  or  the  labourer  that  I  am  plead- 
ing. And  they  shew  further  what  freedom 
means  to  the  economically  helpless,  the 
Uberty  to  be  exploited  in  the  interests  of 
other  people,  body  and  soul,  with  the  risk 
of  being  thrown  on  the  scrapheap  for  the 
smallest  offence  and  very  often  for  the 
mere  accident  of  being  worked  out.  Em- 
ployers' habihty  has  to  some  degree  miti- 
gated this,  but  it  is  not  universal  and  was 
secured  amid  the  frantic  protests  of  the 
plutocracy.  Nor  does  this  condition  con- 
cern the  very  poor  alone.  Everyone  knows 
how  the  middle  classes,  including  even  the 
upper  middle  class,  are  suffering  from  the 
same  condition,  and  their  precarious  tenure 
of  their  position  is  more  and  more  recog- 
nised. A  sudden  illness,  a  shght  error  of 
judgment,  a  mere  accident  may  destroy 
the  whole  position  of  a  small  professional 


X 


84     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

man,  his  death  reduce  to  beggary  his 
whole  family,  and  take  away  all  their 
chances  of  a  good  education.  But  you  are 
famihar  with  many  such  cases. ^ 

Perhaps  our  civilisation  is  not  worse  than 
others,  but  it  is  meaner  and  more  insin- 
cere; and  in  spite  of  all  our  knowledge,  it 
is  fundamentally  stupid  in  the  enormous 
waste  of  human  capacity  which  it  involves. 

Nor  can  any  of  us  escape  the  burden. 
It  is  of  no  avail  to  cry.  Am  I  my  brother's 
keeper?  or  for  those  who  are  placed  as  we 
are,  away  from  the  stress  of  it  all,  to  pride 
ourselves  on  being  considerate  to  depend- 
ents, thinking  that  is  all.  We  are  all 
part  of  the  system.  We  cannot  get  away 
from  it  even  when  we  try,  and  we  profit 
by  it  when  we  least  intend. 

If  you  will  pardon  a  few  words,  of  neces- 
sity autobiographical,  I  will  relate  an  expe- 
rience. Holding  what  was  called  a  rich 
living  (as  things  go),  I  resigned  it  and 
joined  a  community  of  men  living  in  vol- 
untary poverty;  not  the  main,  but  one 
motive,  was  the  feeling  that  at  least  one 
would  be  no  more  exploiting  other  classes, 
and  that  one  would  be  rid  of  responsibihty 


BABYLON  85 

for  an  order,  which  such  an  act  flouts. 
But  I  have  not  found  it  so.  Primarily 
I  am  not  interested  in  these  topics  and 
prefer  to  be  free  of  them  to  think  of  other 
things.  But  the  very  means  of  such  simpU- 
fied  Hving  as  is  provided  by  this  regime,  and 
every  piece  of  bread  I  eat  and  every  train 
I  travel  by,  and  to  some  extent  the  possi- 
biUty  of  such  an  "order"  at  all,  so  far  as 
it  depends  on  anything  but  alms,  all  issue 
out  of  the  system  which  is  so  repellent.  The 
gains  of  the  act  are  purely  personal,  and 
one's  relation  to  the  economic  system  as  a 
whole  alters  but  slightly,  nor  does  the  class- 
support  grow  less  for  such  a  surrender,  in 
many  ways  it  grows  greater,  save  that 
one  is  always  a  recipient,  no  longer  a  donor. 
Certainly  no  man  is  justified  in  thinking 
he  is  freed  from  all  further  responsibiUty 
and  may  dismiss  from  his  mind  the  economic 
muddle  of  the  world.  He  cannot  be  freed. 
So  long  as  he  lives,  it  is  in  him;  and  writhe 
as  we  may,  we  must  bear  the  Nessus-shirt 
of  modern  industriaUsm  and  still  feel  that, 
as  we  have  all  our  hves  been  sheltered 
through  the  blood  and  tears  of  others  and 
ridden  on  the  crest  of  the  wave,  so  we  do 


86     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

still;  and  ours  will  be  the  guilt  if  the  chains 
of  injustice  are  made  heavier.  This  was 
always  the  case.  But  it  is  more  trans- 
parently so  now  than  of  yore.  The  de- 
velopments of  credit  and  transit  have 
united  mankind  more  closely  than  at  any 
other  time.  We  all  share  its  evils  and  its 
benefits.     Mr.   Bernard  Shaw  has  earned 

.  the  thanks  of  all  for  burning  into  us  this 
truth.  In  Widowers^  Houses  and  Mrs. 
WarrerCs  Profession  he  throws  a  lurid  light, 
not  on  the  evils  of  our  day,  but  rather  on 
all  its  "pleasant  pictures."  He  shews  us 
how  the  walled  gardens  of  grace  and  virtue 
which  make  the  life  of  the  few  pleasant, 
and  it  may  be  noble,  are  only  possible 
through  a  surrounding  quagmire.  The  cul- 
ture and  virtue  of  the  few  are  won  through 
a  meanness  and  avarice  which  the  dwellers 
in  the  garden  would  fain  forget.  The  whole  . 
world  of  the  sheltered  classes,  with  their 
high  aims  and  cultivated  tastes,  and  even 
their  very  spiritual  vision,  is  seen  to  be  en- 
joying its  opportunities,  unaware  how  they 

-^are  the  fruit  of  a  putrescent  cruelty. 

It   is    not   inequality   I   am   lamenting,- 
Inequality  may  be  right  or  wrong,  but  it 


BABYLON  87 

has  in  it  nothing  revolting.  There  is  more 
apparent  inequahty  between  the  incomes 
of  some  of  us  in  this  room  than  between 
our  average  income  and  that  of  the  dis- 
inherited classes.  What  is  revolting  is 
the  conditions  which  take  from  a  large 
mass  of  men  the  means  of  a  worthy  per- 
sonal hfe,  which  breed  child-criminals,  pay 
women  "the  wages  of  prostitution,"  and 
even  among  those  better  off  produce  an 
appalling  insecurity.  For  thousands  of  peo- 
ple live  always  on  the  edge  of  a  precipice, 
and  many  more  are  breaking  down  from 
the  overstrain  of  an  age  which  lives  in  a 
fever.  For  is  it  not  true  that  at  present 
services  are  performed  by  "private  individ- 
uals under  competitive  conditions,  strug- 
ghng  for  life  and  death  on  the  incHned  plane 
that  leads  to  ruin,  fighting  always  for  more, 
lest  they  should  be  obliged  to  take  less,  too 
many  of  them  everywhere  competing  for 
one  job,  and  the  conditions  of  success  not 
only  or  even  mainly  merit  and  capacity, 
still  less  honesty  and  rectitude,  which  may 
be  positive  disqualifications,  but  that 
pecuHar  and  intrinsically  contemptible  art 
we  call  *push?'"« 


88     CIVILISATrON  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

All  this  I  notice  not  in  order  to  suggest 
a  new  scheme  of  social  amelioration,  but 
to  point  the  need  of  deliverance.  I  could 
not  omit  it.  The  problem  is  haunting  and 
forbids  one  to  think  in  quiet  of  the  religious 
and  philosophical  problems  of  hfe.  The 
doctrine  of  original  sin  forces  itself  in  when 
we  would  fain  be  quit  of  it  and  discuss  high 
themes  at  leisure.  Each  man  is  forced 
to  ask  himself,  Why  is  civilisation  to  me 
so  gracious  a  mistress  and  to  others  so  hard 
a  stepmother  .^^  Even  if  we  allow  much  to 
the  solidarity  of  the  family,  and  say  the 
individual  must  share  in  the  life  of  his 
fathers,  we  hardly  get  a  full  solution.  To 
me  and  to  you  she  gives  the  power  to  live, 
not  merely  to  drudge;  to  form  plans  and 
win  high  delights.  At  our  feet  she  pours 
the  treasured  memories  of  the  ages;  she 
opens  the  long  corridor  of  history  and  the 
palaces  of  all  the  courts.  To  us  she  permits 
to  rest  by  pleasant  streams  and  grants  the 
glory  of  letters  and  the  fellowship  of  men 
gone  by.  Why  should  we  have  all  this 
almost  without  our  will  and  others  be 
born  to  squalor  and  foul  living?  Poverty 
is  not  the  evil  in  the  strict  sense.    The 


BABYLON  89 

peasants'  life,  if  well  cared  for,  has  noth- 
ing in  it  ignoble.  It  is  the  daily  grinding 
care,  the  exposure  to  foul  temptation, 
the  blighting  of  soul,  the  inferno  of  the 
slum,  and  of  things  we  cannot  bear  to 
picture,  that  are  the  fortune  of  too  many 
thousands  to  leave  one  a  comfortable  mind. 
Somewhere  there  must  be  wrong,  some 
canker  of  soul  among  us,  in  a  world  which 
keeps  its  chances  for  so  few  and  for  large 
numbers  reserves  a  slavery  worse  in  many 
ways  than  that  of  Pagan  Rome. 

"You  and  I,  you  must  remember,  belong 
to  the  small  section  of  society  that  has  both 
kinds  of  freedom;  and  I  think  it  possible 
that  we  really  have  on  the  balance  more 
liberty  than  we  could  easily  secure  under 
other  conditions,  though  to  my  mind  the 
value  of  the  Hberty  is  almost  destroyed  by 
the  knowledge  of  the  price  which  others 
have  to  pay  for  it.  For  these  others,  the 
mass  of  men,  what  freedom  really  have 
they.^  Can  they  effectively  choose  their 
career,  more  than  under  the  most  bureau- 
cratic sociahsm?  Can  they  fix  their  hours 
of  work.^  Can  they  determine  their  wage? 
Can  they  travel.'^    Can  they  educate  them- 


90     CIVILISATION  >T  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

selves?  Can  they  select  their  society? 
Can  they  assure  their  solitude?"  ^ 

We  may  try  to  turn  away  from  this 
spectacle.  We  do  not  like  it.  It  is  dull. 
It  is  so  much  pleasanter  to  dwell  upon  art 
and  letters,  so  much  nicer  to  think  of  our 
"Christian  privileges,"  or  (if  you  will),  our 
privileges  as  non-Christians.  But  there 
they  are.  They  will  not  let  us  be.  That 
haunting  face  of  the  beggar  in  the  street, 
the  harlot  at  the  gate,  the  unemployed, 
the  inheritors  of  disease.  Nothing  but 
fortune  prevents  our  being  like  that.  "There 
but  for  the  grace  of  God  goes  John  Brad- 
ford," was  said  once  at  the  sight  of  a  con- 
victed murderer  going  to  his  doom;  and  the 
words  cannot  but  echo  in  our  ears  at  any 
sight  of  a  member  of  the  disinherited  class. 

Idle  it  is,  and  waste  of  breath,  to  prate 
of  the  triumphs  of  civilisation,  or  to  quote 
^  the  figures  of  the  national  income,  when  at 
its  heart  there  is  this  festering  sore,  when 
the  proportion  of  those  who  really  use  the 
fruits  of  our  knowledge  to  those  ground 
beneath  its  car  must  be  smaller  than  in 
Pagan  Rome,  far  smaller  than  in  medieval 
Europe.     Something   is   wrong,   and   that 


BABYLON  91 

wrong  has  been  growing  with  the  growth 
of  our  knowledge  and  its  resulting  wealth. 
So  much  seems  bare  fact.  "There  is 
death  in  the  pot"  of  modern  civiKsation, 
and  it  is  not  like  to  heal  itself. 


Let  us  turn  to  the  other  side  and  regard 
the  Kfe  of  the  triumphant  classes,  "the 
conquerors"  of  Mr.  Masterman's  analysis. 

Does  that  offer  a  cheerful  spectacle? 
The  vulgarity  and  vices  of  the  rich  form  a 
theme  for  satire  in  all  ages  and  I  shall  not 
attempt  to  emulate  it.  We  may  talk  of 
the  ennui  and  boredom  of  wealth,  and  there 
is  truth  in  this.  But  dull  people  are  not 
always  dull  to  themselves.  Jane  Austen's 
characters  appear  to  us  to  have  led  a  some- 
what flat  existence.  Probably,  however, 
to  them  it  was  about  as  amusing  as  her 
description  of  it  is  to  us.  Dr.  Johnson 
defined  a  fishing-rod  as  "a  rod  with  a  worm 
at  one  end  and  a  fool  at  the  other."  That 
shews  that  the  doctor  was  no  fisherman,  but 
it  proves  nothing  against  angling.  Freak 
dinners    and    other    tasteless    caprices    of 


92     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

which  we  hear  are  probably  the  highest 
amusements  of  which  those  who  give  them 
are  capable  —  may,  indeed,  be  to  them  a 
spiritual  ascent. 

Other  sources  of  evidence  there  are,  less 
disputable.  Despite  the  advance  of  hygi- 
enics, is  health  among  the  richer  classes  so 
much  better  than  it  used  to  be?  Doubt- 
less more  weakly  people  are  kept  alive, 
and  the  average  length  of  life  is  longer.  But 
is  there  less  worrying  ill-health  than  of 
old.f^  Judging  by  its  interest  as  a  topic  of 
conversation,  and  the  universal  fads  about 
diet,  the  proportion  of  people  driven  to 
think  about  their  health  is  much  larger, 
and  even  fads  would  not  flourish  if  the 
normal  regimen  were  all  that  could  be 
desired.  Doctors  appear  to  think  that 
neurasthenia  and  all  forms  of  brain  exhaus- 
tion are  on  the  increase.  Not  long  ago 
we  heard  of  an  epidemic  of  suicide  in  Ger- 
man schools  due  to  over-pressure,  and  it 
is  said  that  lunacy  is  on  the  increase.  In 
setting  against  this  the  reduction  of  suffer- 
ing through  the  use  of  anaesthetics  we  must 
bear  in  mind  that  the  subjective  side  of 
ill-health  is  the  most  important  and   the 


BABYLON  9S 

most  disabling  disease  is  probably  a  cause 
of  less  real  distress  to  the  patient  than 
some  form  of  nerve  or  brain  depression 
which  leaves  his  organs  sound.  And  it  is 
in  all  these  regions,  where  it  is  felt  most, 
that  the  standard  seems  getting  lower  under 
the  pressure  of  modern  life  and  its  con- 
tinual fever;  and  this  is  the  case  through 
the  whole  range  of  society.  An  observer 
by  no  means  hostile  says  that  it  is  true 
even  of  children;  we  must  not  expect  them 
to  be  so  healthy  as  those  of  a  past  genera- 
tion. And  he  gives  the  ground  in  excite- 
ment of  modern  life  with  all  its  rush.  This 
is  the  judgment  of  Mr.  Cooper  in  his 
Twentieth  Century  Child: » 

"The  normal  healthy  child  of  eight  or 
ten  will  do  nothing  quietly;  and  when  you 
put  it  to  do  modern  lessons  among  people 
who  hve  on  motor  cars,  conduct  two  thirds 
of  their  correspondence  by  telegram,  and 
want  to  prosecute  half  the  express  trains 
in  the  kingdom  for  loitering,  in  ten  years' 
time  you  will  probably  have  to  send  it 
to  bed  for  a  nerve-cure.  Put  a  boy  to 
work  full  hours  at  a  Board  school,  and 
later  on  half-time  at  a  factory,  with  plenty 


94      CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

of  home  work  and  worry  besides,  and 
unwholesome  food  to  complicate  matters, 
and  the  state  of  his  physique  will  be  below 
modern  army  requirements.  It  would  he 
hard  to  say  in  which  class  of  life  the  child 
pays  the  higher  price  for  his  knowledge. 
But  unless  we  are  prepared  to  face  this 
physical  deterioration  and  to  induce  the 
children  to  abandon  their  sixteen  years  of 
undivided  cricket  and  football  for  the 
pursuit  of  knowledge,  it  is  difficult  to  see 
how  any  philosopher,  statesman,  or  prophet 
can  save  the  supremacy  of  England." 

If  this  is  the  case  with  the  young,  a  little 
enquiry  at  Homburg  or  Carlsbad  would 
reveal  a  worse  state  of  things  among  their 
elders;  while  even  in  regard  to  the  triumphs 
of  surgery,  I  have  heard  a  brilhant  doctor 
maintain  that  anaesthetics  had  caused  more 
suffering  than  they  had  cured.  At  least 
there  is  sufficient  evidence  that  those  on  the 
crest  of  the  wave  are  in  this  respect  in  no 
very  enviable  state,  and  are  probably  worse 
rather  than  better  off  than  their  fathers 
were.  But  this  is  not  all.  Nor  is  it  the 
main  point.  The  test  of  a  civilisation  is 
in   its   characteristic   culture   and   in   the 


BABYLON  95 

type  of  men  and  women  who  thrive  best 
in  it. 

As  I  said  last  time,  amid  the  Babel  of  the 
world's  religions  and  moralities,  it  is  not 
possible  to  state  what  are  the  governing 
ideals  of  the  triumphant  classes  at  the 
moment,  and  it  is  ten  to  one  that  if  you 
met  two  dozen  at  dinner,  you  would  hear  a 
dozen  different  faiths  asserted,  with  all  that 
voluble  enthusiasm  that  befits  "the  light 
haK-believers  of  our  casual  creeds."  On 
this  point  I  said  enough  in  my  first  lecture 
and  we  need  not  go  further.  But  if  we  judge 
by  their  conduct,  we  may  well  ask  with 
Archbishop  Benson,  when  he  arrived  in 
London,  "What  do  these  people  believe?" 
We  have,  however,  some  better  evidence 
of  the  type  of  characters  which  thrive  in 
our  age  and  may  be  regarded  as  its  most 
prominent  fruit.  It  is  rather  the  women 
than  the  men  of  an  epoch  who  accentuate 
and  express  its  dominant  principles,  because 
they  do  so  for  the  most  part  unconsciously. 
It  is  not  what  people  actually  profess,  but 
what  they  habitually  practice,  that  gives 
the  true  note  of  an  age.  In  the  novels  of 
your  distinguished  compatriot,  Mr.  Henry 


96       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

James,  we  have  an  accurate  and  subtle 
portraiture  of  the  manners  and  aims  of 
the  fortunate  classes;  the  more  valuable 
because  it  is  drawn  without  reference  at 
all  to  a  moral.  There  we  find  women  in 
plenty,  whose  speech  and  thought,  more 
subtly  delineating  itself  than  in  any  other 
writer,  live  for  us,  as  does  the  whole  milieu 
of  their  life.  And  what  strikes  one  next 
to  the  consummate,  if  a  little  over-con- 
scious, skill  of  the  artist  is  the  almost  com- 
plete lack  of  any  approach  to  noble  aims 
or  even  interesting  characters.  They  are 
interesting  only  through  the  wonderful 
art  of  the  novelist.  I  mean  that  they  are 
none  of  them  people  whom  one  would 
care  to  meet  twice,  and  even  their  immorali- 
ties are  only  disgusting.  What  sort  of  an 
age  can  it  be  which  speaks  in  Kate  Croy's 
Sense  of  Honour  or  in  the  chivalrous  friend- 
ship of  Charlotte  in  The  Golden  Bowl?  If 
you  go  further  and  take  the  crowd  of 
people  who  figure  in  the  Awkward  Age  or 
in  What  Maisie  Knew  or  in  the  Sacred 
Fount,  no  one  can  deny  that  you  have  the 
picture  of  a  society  exclusive,  outwardly 
refined,  and  sheltered  from  all  the  wider 


BABYLON  97 

interests  of  men.  Their  life  is  essentially 
a  private  one,  and  their  amusements  seem 
never  to  reach  beyond  a  flirtation  that 
suggests  something  more.  Without  (so  far 
as  we  can  tell)  intending  or  desiring  to 
do  so,  Mr.  Henry  James  has  allowed  the 
emptiness,  the  meanness,  and  the  drab 
morals  of  our  day  a  hardly  less  perfect 
monument  than  was  given  to  the  Renais- 
sance women  under  the  great  Elizabeth. 
Compare  them  with  the  heroines  of  George 
Meredith;  compare  their  whole  life  with 
the  sinners  of  Thackeray.  Why,  Becky 
Sharp  is  worth  the  lot  of  them!  She  may 
have  been  bad, but  she  was  great;  they  share 
her  badness,  but  are  httle,  eternally  little; 
and  indeed  the  whole  scene  of  morals  sug- 
gests that  hero  of  Kipling's  poem  who  had 
no  deeds  that  were  not  second-hand,  and 
only  committed  adultery  because  he  read  of 
it  in  a  French  book.  Screaming  ever  more 
discordantly  in  the  effort  to  reach  beyond 
the  top-note,  the  men  and  women  of  our 
latter  day  have  achieved  only  a  prevailing 
flatness  of  spirit;  all  this  mirrors  itself 
to  perfection  in  the  great  writer  I  have 
been  discussing,  and  it  does  so  the  better 


98       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

owing  to  the  inwardness  of  his  method, 
which  displays  the  soul  from  within  and  also 
because  the  men  and  women  he  takes  are 
as  a  rule  of  no  outstanding  quality,  but 
such  as  may  be  met  with  in  any  drawing- 
room. 

What  then  are  the  outward  products  of 
our  existing  system?  What  good  things  will 
it  leave  to  posterity  to  set  by  the  monu- 
ments of  the  past  days?  Si  monumentum 
quaeris  circumspice.  Walk  down  the  streets 
of  any  typically  modern  town,  or  take,  if 
you  can,  a  bird's-eye  view  of  a  region,  like 
the  Black  country.  These  are  the  things 
we  have  really  made.  We  have  no  right 
to  claim  as  ours  the  great  cathedrals,  or 
the  colleges  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  any 
more  than  the  Hotel  de  Ville  of  Brussels  or 
the  Rathhaus  of  Rothenburg  an  der  Tauber. 
It  is  the  factories,  the  banks,  the  hotels, 
and  the  streets  and  the  structure  of  our 
towns  which  display  what  the  age  cares 
for.  I  do  not  say  that  all  is  bad,  or  even 
that  so  far  as  street  architecture  goes  there 
has  not  been  within  the  last  twenty  years 
a  great  improvement.  Here  and  there  a 
bank  or  a   great  shop,   or   a   station  Uke 


BABYLON  99 

the  Pennsylvania  Railway  Station  is  a 
decent  bit  of  architecture.  But  taking 
the  multitude  of  our  buildings  alone,  our 
municipal  buildings,  our  museums  and 
modern  universities,  our  capitals,  our  in- 
dustrial cities,  our  watering-places  and 
towns  of  pleasure,  our  suburbs,  rich  and 
poor,  what  sort  of  impression  will  they 
leave  on  a  future  age?  One  observer  of 
English  life,  after  enlarging  on  the  growth 
of  private  ostentation,  compares  our  age 
with  one  or  two  others  in  terms  hardly 
extravagant. 

"Dr.  Dill  ^  has  shewn  in  the  Roman 
Peace,  during  the  age  of  the  Antonines 
and  after,  the  people  of  the  Empire  turning 
with  enthusiasm  to  great  communal  build- 
ing, and  every  city  setting  itself  to  such 
achievements  as  remain  today  the  wonder 
of  the  world.  .  .  .  What  kind  of  building 
will  represent  for  the  astonishment  of 
future  ages  the  harvest  of  the  super-wealth 
of  the  British  Peace?  The  signs  are  not 
propitious.  A  Byzantine  cathedral  at  West- 
minster, a  Gothic  cathedral  at  Liverpool, 
a  few  town-halls  and  libraries  of  sober 
solidity,  the  white  buildings  which  today 


100     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

line  Whitehall  and  fill  the  passing  stranger 
with  bewilderment  at  a  race  'that  thus 
could  build '  will  be  the  chief  legacies  of  this 
present  generation.  The  thirteenth  century- 
gave  us  the  cathedrals;  the  sixteenth  gave 
us  the  colleges  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
and  the  noblest  of  English  country  houses. 
This  tiny  England  with  populations  in  the 
aggregate  less  than  that  of  London  today 
and  wealth  incomparably  smaller  has 
left  us  possessions  which  we  can  admire 
but  not  equal.  *The  work  which  we  col- 
lective children  of  God  do/  complained 
Matthew  Arnold,  *our  grand  centre  of  life, 
our  city  for  us  to  dwell  in,  is  London  —  Lon- 
don with  its  unutterable  external  hideous- 
ness,  with  its  internal  canker  of  publice 
egestas  privatim  opulanter  unequalled  by 
the  world.'  It  was  this  contrast  which 
gave  point  to  a  question  which  otherwise 
the  plain  man  would  put  by  as  absurd. 
*If  England  were  swallowed  up  by  the 
sea  tomorrow,  which  of  the  two,  a  hundred 
years  hence,  would  most  excite  the  interest 
and  admiration  of  mankind,  the  England 
of  the  last  twenty  years  or  the  England  of 
Elizabeth?'" 


BABYLON  lOl 

And  truly  the  outward  aspect  of  the  world 
in  which  we  live  is  not  such  as  to  arouse 
extravagant  gratification,  even  though  we 
have  tasteful  drawing-rooms  and  pleasant 
private  gardens.  If  we  leave  out  of  it 
all  these  legacies  of  a  past  age,  like  our 
churches,  or  the  immemorial  beauty  of 
the  EngUsh  country  side,  and  think  of  the 
world  so  far  as  it  is  the  work  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  can  any  man,  however 
much  an  optimist,  be  enthusiastic?  Do 
we  not  feel  refreshed  when  we  do  the 
bidding  of  WilHam  Morris  ^^  and 

"Forget  six  counties  overhung  with  smoke; 
Forget  the  snorting  steam  and  piston-stroke; 
Forget  the  spreading  of  the  hideous  town; 
Think  rather  of  the  pack-horse  on  the  down, 
And  dream  of  London  small,  and  white,  and  clean, 
The  clear  Thames  bordered  by  the  gardens  green; 
Think  that  below  bridge  the  keen  sapping  waves 
Smite  some  few  keels  that  bear  Levantine  staves. 
And  cloth  of  Bruges  and  hogsheads  of  Guienne, 
While  nigh  the  thronged  wharf  Geoffrey  Chaucer's 

pen 
Moves  over  bills  of  lading"? 

WiUiam  Cobbett  was  no  dreamy  senti- 
mentalist, and  he  used  to  talk  of  London 
"as   a   great   wen,*'   and   I   suppose   that 


102     CIViLiSATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

while  the  centre  may  be  improved,  that  if 
the  whole  area  be  included,  the  prospect 
would  be  more  squaUd  now  than  when  he 
wrote.  To  set  against  medieval  Florence 
or  Durham  or  Tewkesbury,  all  character- 
istic and  typical,  what  are  our  types? 
The  factory-town,  acres  of  mean  streets,  the 
slums  of  our  cities  —  places  of  which  one 
very  unromantic  observer  said,  "The  best 
thing  that  could  happen  to  them  would 
be  to  be  burnt  down."  It  is  not  that  there 
were  no  ugly  or  dirty  or  repulsive  sights  in 
the  past,  but  that  their  typical  monu- 
ments are  beautiful,  and  ours  are  —  what 
we  know.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that  they 
are  greatly  altered  for  the  better  by  our 
jubilee  clock-towers,  the  piers  of  our  water- 
ing-places, or  the  frock-coated  effigies  of 
municipal  notabiHties.  In  other  matters 
comparison  is  easier.  One  reason  of  the 
dehght  in  the  old  masters  is  that  the  world 
which  they  depicted  in  costume  and  colour 
was  so  much  more  beautiful.  Compare 
the  colours  and  lines  of  a  Fra  Angelico  or 
Pinturicchio's  Griselda  with  any  to  be 
found  in  a  modern  street.  It  is  the  life 
out  of  which  these  things  grew  that  is  so 


BABYLON  103 

much  worthier  than  ours,  or  than,  say,  the 
grand  Steele  with  its  pompous  affectations. 
For  no  one  would  deny  the  exceptional 
beauties  of  our  civiHsation  any  more  than 
the  rare  glory  of  an  artistic  genius,  hke  that 
of  Whistler  who  painted  it;  but  its  char- 
acteristic drabness  and  prevaiHng  squalor 
make  one  long  to  cry  out 

"Oh  Love!  could'st  thou  and  I  with  Fate  conspire 
To  grasp  this  sorry  scheme  of  things  entire, 

Would  we  not  shatter  it  to  bits?     And  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire?  '* 

For  this  ugliness  is  self-chosen.  It  is  the 
lie  in  the  soul.  We  flatter  ourselves  by 
supposing  it  incidental  to  an  age  of  me- 
chanical invention  and  much  use  of  iron. 
But  iron  girders  may  be  beautiful  and 
marble  palaces  vulgar.  As  Mr.  Wells 
shewed  in  a  New  Utopia,  a  society  with 
peace  at  its  heart  could  make  use  of  all 
and  more  than  all  our  mechanical  acquire- 
ments and  yet  have  its  bridges,  its  rail- 
roads, and  its  factories  noble  and  serene, 
ministers  to  the  Ufe  of  the  spirit  instead 
of  torments.  No  one,  I  suppose,  would 
deny  the  dignity  of  your  Pennsylvania 
Railway  Station,  and  I  could  name  at  least 


\ 


104     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

one  famous  Italian  cathedral  which  is 
in  many  ways  repulsive.  Nor  is  it  for  want 
of  money  spent  that  our  world  is  ugly. 
One  authority  declares  that  there  is  more 
spent  on  art  in  our  schools  in  a  single  year 
than  there  was  in  the  whole  fourteenth 
century.  11 

The  lust  of  personal  wealth  and  the  pre- 
vailing fever  leave  men  with  no  eyes  for 
what  is  worthy  or  base  in  this  civilisation. 
Provided  they  can  make  their  homes  pleas- 
ant and  decorate  them  with  a  certain 
measure  of  taste,  they  will  contemplate 
in  comfort  cities  which  have  no  single 
ic  building  worthy  of  the  name  and 
populations  squalid  and  ill-clothed.  It  is 
not  iron  or  engines,  it  is  the  unchecked 
operation  of  greed  that  makes  life  so  hid- 
eous; and  until  the  soul  of  man  is  weary 
of  his  millions,  we  need  hardly  look  for 
much  improvement.12 

This  is  the  point.  It  is  a  new  soul  that 
the  world  needs,  not  a  scheme  of  reforms. 
The  only  source  of  such  new  life  is  faith 
of  one  kind  or  another.  From  many  ob- 
servers comes  the  cry  for  life,  for  dehver- 
ance,  for  some  uphfting  power.    The  cry, 


^publ 


BABYLON  105 

though  little  regarded  as  yet  in  the  seats  of 
the  mighty,  will  ere  long  be  triumphant, 
unless  the  world  is  to  go  the  way  of  other 
decadent  civihsations  and  pass  through 
self-indulgence  to  ruin.  The  remedies  sug- 
gested often  differ,  but  the  sense  of  need 
is  wide-spread.  Let  us  state  some  instances. 
Rudolf  Eucken  of  Jena,  one  of  the  weight- 
iest of  Uving  philosophers,  preaches  strongly 
this  very  need  of  redemption.  He  is  no 
upholder  of  evangelical  tradition.  Indeed 
he  has  added  one  chapter  to  his  work  on 
Christianity  and  the  New  Idealism  to  redeem 
him  from  the  stigma  of  orthodoxy.  Yet  it 
is  the  fundamental  idea  of  the  evangehcal 
faith  which  animates  him.  He  argues  that 
the  Western  civilisation  is  unable  either 
to  effect  man's  salvation  or  to  satisfy  his 
deepest  needs.  Alike  from  the  intellectual 
and  the  practical  standpoint  Eucken  argues 
the  needs  of  those  ideas  of  redemptive 
grace  and  supernatural  hfe  which  find  their 
expression  in  the  Christian  Church.  Per- 
haps I  may  be  permitted  to  quote.^^ 

"What  do  we  see.^  WhirHng  complexity, 
restless  hurry  and  pursuit,  a  passionate 
exaltation    of     self    and    an    overweening 


106     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

pushing  of  its  claims  against  those  of  others; 
Hfe  occupied  with  aUen  interests  rather 
than  its  own;  no  inward  problems  or  in- 
ward motives;  little  pure  enthusiasm  or 
genuine  love;  the  fostering  and  furthering 
of  self  ever  the  dominant  note,  despite  all 
boastful  profession  and  even  some  really- 
honest  work;  man,  with  his  likes  and  dis- 
likes, the  supreme  arbiter  of  good  and  evil, 
true  and  false,  so  that  the  main  goal  of 
endeavour  is  to  win  social  favour  and 
respect  appearances.  All  this,  however 
much  it  may  make  profession  of  following 
after  ideal  goals  and  being  guided  by  ideal 
sentiments,  yet  reveals  in  every  part  of  it 
an  inner  insincerity,  a  repellant  unreality,  a 
spiritual  tameness  and  hollo wness." 

"To  every  thinking  man  the  great  alter- 
native presents  itself,  the  Either  —  Or. 
Either  there  is  something  older  and  higher 
than  this  purely  humanistic  culture  or  life 
ceases  to  have  any  meaning  or  value."  ^* 

And  once  more: 

"We  may  dismiss  all  hope  of  giving  life 
meaning  and  value  by  a  mere  further 
development  of  this  purely  humanistic 
culture.     Such  a  culture,  even  if  its  goal 


BABYLON  107 

were  obtainable,  would  not  satisfy  us. 
It  has  blossomed  out  freely  during  our 
modern  period,  and  it  has  been  successful 
in  diverting  the  stream  of  Ufe  into  its  own 
channels.  But  the  more  independent  and 
exclusive  it  becomes,  the  more  it  repels 
the  intrusion  of  any  influence  and  friendly 
supplement  from  the  long  centuries  of  past 
labour,  the  more  clearly  are  its  Hmitations 
seen,  the  more  certainly  does  it  live  out  its 
influence  and  bring  about  its  own  downfall. 
"We  are  feeling  that,  at  the  present 
moment,  and  with  growing  acuteness,  a 
weariness  of  the  world  and  a  deep  dislike 
to  its  hmitations  are  becoming  more  and 
more  general.  We  feel  that  life  must  for- 
feit all  meaning  and  value  if  man  may  not 
strive  towards  some  lofty  goal  in  depend- 
ence on  a  Power  that  is  higher  than  man 
and  as  he  reaches  forward  reaUze  himself 
more  fully  than  he  could  ever  do  under 
the  conditions  of  sense  and  experience. 
Cut  off  from  the  larger  hfe  of  the  universe 
and  shut  up  in  a  sphere  of  his  own,  he  is 
condemned  to  an  unbearably  narrow  and 
paltry  existence,  and  the  deeps  of  his  own 
nature  are  locked  away  from  him.    Thus 


4 


108    CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

today  we  hear  a  great  deal  of  the  super- 
human and  the  superman,  but  for  all  the 
genuine  longing  such  a  movement  may 
embody  it  cannot  but  degenerate  into  mere 
idle  words  if  this  superhuman  be  sought 
within  the  world  of  sense-experience,  within 
the  sphere  of  our  immediate  existence. 
For  man  is  far  too  closely  bound  by  the 
fetters  of  his  nature  and  his  destiny  to  be 
renewed  in  life  and  being  by  the  mere 
magic  of  a  word.  Thus  he  must  either  break 
with  the  realistic  culture  or  renounce  all 
hope  of  inwardly  raising  humanity  and 
realizing  the  meaning  of  life.  Only  a  shal- 
low and  trivial  philosophy  can  deem  any 
third  course  possible."  ^^ 

In  other  words,  man  is  once  more  asking 
the  question,  "What  must  I  do  to  be 
saved  .f^"  And  those  who,  like  Nietzsche, 
preach  salvation  by  the  superman  are  in 
reahty  pointing  to  a  world  beyond,  although 
they  eschew  with  scorn  all  notion  of  a 
gospel  from  jenseits,  Eucken,  indeed,  has 
no  doubt  that  our  fundamental  need  is  the 
need  of  a  redemptive  religion  and  that  it 
can  be  met  in  no  other  fashion. 

"Discontent  with  the  world  as  it  is,  till 


BABYLON  109 

at  last  such  a  world  becomes  unendurable, 
is  what  drives  the  soul  to  religion. 

"From  religion  we  hope  to  gain  that 
which  we  cannot  gain  from  the  world,  but 
at  the  same  time  cannot  do  without. 

"Thus  the  question  that  presses  itself 
on  us  is  the  question  where,  and  how  it  is, 
that  we  are  conscious  of  a  defect,  a  disturb- 
ance, a  warping  of  existence,  which  will 
not  allow  us  to  rest. 

"In  a  word,  it  is  the  problem  of  evil  that 
is  the  winnowing  fan  for  rehgions  as  well 
as  for  persons,  and  it  is  their  solution  of 
this  problem  which  is  the  real  test  of  their 
pretensions. 

"Here,  more  than  anywhere  else,  life 
is  concentrated  into  one  question  and  one 
answer."  ^^ 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge  again,  the  distinguished 
physicist,  has  declared  his  dissatisfaction 
with  some  elements  of  traditional  religion. 
Yet  he  emphasizes  the  truth  of  a  world  of 
supernatural  agencies  in  contact  with  man, 
and  more  than  anyone  else  has  he  brought 
into  relief  the  difference  between  the  view 
of  the  world  thus  opened  and  the  closed 
system  of  rationalism." 


110     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

"This  is  the  kernel  of  what  I  have  to 
say  —  that  orthodox  modern  science  shows 
us  a  self-contained  and  self-suflBcient  uni- 
verse, not  in  touch  with  anything  beyond 
or  above  itself;  the  general  trend  and 
outline  of  it  known;  nothing  supernat- 
ural or  miraculous,  no  intervention  of 
beings  other  than  ourselves  being  conceived 
possible. 

"While  religion,  on  the  other  hand, 
requires  us  constantly  and  consciously  to 
be  in  touch  —  even  aiSPectionately  in  touch 
—  with  a  power,  a  mind,  a  being  or  beings, 
entirely  out  of  our  sphere,  entirely  beyond 
our  scientific  ken.  The  universe  contem- 
plated by  religion  is  by  no  means  self- 
contained  or  self-sufficient,  it  is  dependent 
for  its  origin  and  maintenance,  as  we  are 
for  daily  bread  and  future  hopes,  upon  the 
power  and  good-will  of  a  being  or  beings  of 
which  science  has  no  knowledge.  Science 
does  not  indeed  always  or  consistently  deny 
the  existence  of  such  transcendent  beings 
nor  does  it  make  any  effectual  attempt  to 
limit  their  potential  powers,  but  it  definitely 
disbeheves  in  their  exerting  any  actual 
influence  on  the  progress  of  events,  or  in 


BABYLON  111 

their  producing  or  modifying  the  simplest 
physical  phenomenon. 

"For  instance,  it  is  now  considered  un- 
scientific to  pray  for  rain.  ...  It  ought, 
however,  to  be  admitted  by  Natural  Philos- 
ophers that  the  unscientific  character  of 
prayer  for  rain  depends  really  not  upon  its 
conflict  with  any  known  physical  law, 
since  it  need  invohe  no  greater  interference 
with  the  order  of  nature  than  is  implied  in  a 
request  to  a  gardener  to  water  the  garden — 
it  does  not  really  depend  upon  the  impossi- 
bility of  causing  rain  to  fall,  when  other- 
wise it  might  not  —  but  upon  the  disbeHef 
of  science  in  any  power  who  can  and  will 
attend  and  act. 

"The  root  question  of  outstanding  con- 
troversy between  science  and  faith  rests 
upon  two  distinct  conceptions  of  the  uni- 
verse: the  one,  that  of  a  self-contained  and 
self-sufficient  universe  with  no  outlook  into 
or  links  with  anything  beyond,  uninfluenced 
by  any  fife  or  mind  except  such  as  is  con- 
nected with  a  visible  and  tangible  material 
body,  and  the  other  conception,  that  of  a 
universe  lying  open  to  all  manner  of  spiritual 
influences,  permeated  through  and  through 


m    CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

with  a  Divine  spirit,  guided  and  watched 
by  Hving  minds,  acting  through  the  medium 
of  law  indeed,  but  with  intelligence  and 
love  behind  the  law,  a  universe  by  no  means 
self-sufficient  or  self-contained,  but  with 
sensitive  tendencies  groping  with  another 
super-sensuous  order  of  existence,  where 
reign  laws  hitherto  unimagined  by  science, 
but  laws  as  real  and  as  mighty  as  those  by 
which  the  material  universe  is  governed. 

"'For  nothing  is  that  errs  from  law.' 
According  to  the  one  conception,  faith  is 
childish  and  prayer  absurd;  the  only  in- 
dividual immortality  Hes  in  the  memory 
of  descendants;  benevolence  and  cheerful 
acquiescence  in  fate  are  the  highest  attri- 
butes possible;  and  the  future  of  the 
human  race  is  determined  by  the  law  of 
gravitation  and  the  circumstances  of  space. 

"According  to  the  other  conception, 
prayer  may  be  mighty  to  the  removal  of 
mountains,  and  by  faith  we  may  feel  our- 
selves citizens  of  an  eternal  and  glorious 
cosmogony  of  mutual  help  and  coopera- 
tion —  advancing  from  lowly  stages  to  ever 
higher  states  of  happy  activity  world  with- 
out end  —  and  may  catch  in  anticipation 


BABYLON  113 

some  glimpse  of  that  *one  far  off  divine 
event  to  which  the  whole  creation  moves'. 

"The  whole  controversy  hinges,  in  one 
sense,  on  a  practical  pivot,  the  efficacy  of 
prayer.  Is  prayer  to  hypothetical  and 
super-sensuous  beings  as  senseless  and  use- 
less as  it  is  unscientific?  Or  does  prayer 
pierce  through  the  husk  and  apparent 
covering  of  the  sensuous  universe,  and 
reach  something  living,  loving,  and  helpful 
beyond? 

"And  in  another  sense  the  controversy 
turns  upon  a  question  of  fact.  Do  we  live 
in  a  universe  permeated  with  Hfe  and  mind, 
life  and  mind  independent  of  matter  and 
unhmited  in  individual  duration?  Or  is 
this  life  Hmited  in  space  to  the  surface  of 
planetary  masses,  and  in  time  to  the  dura- 
tion of  the  material  envelope  essential  to 
its  manifestation?  The  answer  is  given  in 
one  way  by  orthodox  modern  science; 
and  in  another  way  by  ReHgion  of  all 
times." 

Huxley  in  his  famous  Romanes  Lecture, 
though  I  suppose  he  remained  in  his  chosen 
agnosticism,  yet  argued  for  an  ethical 
system  very  different  from  anything  sug- 


114     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

gested  by  rationalism;  if  the  cosmic  pro- 
cess is  to  be  thwarted  by  another,  and  if 
as  a  fact  human  hfe  has  been  ennobled  by 
such  thwarting,  it  would  seem  that  there 
must  be  in  the  nature  of  man  some  deeps 
which  are  not  arrived  at  by  any  merely 
mechanical  evolution. 

Nietzsche  again,  deliberately  anti-Chris- 
tian though  he  be,  is  equally  emphatic  in 
condemnation  of  the  present  situation. 
His  system  turns  on  the  need  for  a  new 
N^  race  incarnating  a  new  ideal.  His  doctrine 
of  human  nature,  as  sunk  in  darkness  until 
the  superman  comes  to  redeem  it,  is  curi- 
ously akin  to  Christianity.  I  think  also 
\^  that  in  his  assertion  of  the  worth  of  per- 
sonality he  is  far  less  vitally  opposed  to 
our  faith  than  he  is  to  that  Eastern  pessi- 
mism, masquerading  as  altruism,  for  which 
he  partly  mistook  it.  Though  he  does  not 
accept  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  indi- 
vidual, his  attitude  is  nearer  to  it  than  the 
rationalist  scheme  which  he  attacked;  while 
he  has  been  called  more  than  once  funda- 
mentally mystic.  He  is  like  Lucifer,  son 
of  the  morning,  a  spirit  fallen  from  heaven; 
and  after  all  his  eloquence,  his  superman  is 


BABYLON  115 

only  a  god  from  the  machine,  no  redeemer 
from  above,  but  a  new  conquering  aristoc- 
racy, the  "splendid  blonde  beast."  Like 
Hegel's,  his  philosophy  comes  to  the  Kaiser 
at  last. 

If  we  take  writers  more  popular,  we  wit- 
ness the  same  phenomenon.  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  in  Man  and  Superman  preaches  a 
similar  doctrine  —  that  the  world  is  very 
evil,  that  it  needs  redemption,  and  that 
somehow  is  to  come  out  of  eugenics.  In 
that  large  class  of  books  of  which  Mr. 
Wells'  New  Utopia  is  a  type,  and  the  novels 
of  Mr.  John  Galsworthy  are  an  element, 
we  find  very  much  the  same  features.  The 
dominant  ideals  of  commerciaHsm  are  held 
up  to  scorn  and  some  kind  of  evangel  is 
proclaimed  which  is  to  free  us  from  its 
accumulated  horrors. 

The  lyrical  raptures  of  the  Cobdenite 
school  are  almost  forgotten,  except  when 
some  stranded  millionaire  like  Mr.  Carnegie 
declares  that  all  is  the  best  in  the  best  of 
possible  worlds,  and  that  in  a  very  brief 
space  we  shall  reach  perfection  if  things  go 
on  as  they  are.  Our  world  is  fonder  of 
riches,  perhaps,  than  ever  it  was,  but  I 


116     CXVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

think  that  it  is  ceasing  to  believe  in  its 
idol.  The  danger  is  that  it  should  cease  to 
have  any  belief  at  all.  Wearied  of  its  hope 
of  finding  in  material  prosperity  a  satisfac- 
tion for  its  insatiable  desires,  and  robbed 
through  that  hope  of  all  spiritual  ideals,  it 
may  sink  into  a  fatigued  scepticism  and 
fall  a  prey  to  pessimism.  This  appears  to 
be  discernible  of  many  even  now.  It  is 
this  process  which  needs  to  be  arrested. 
No  order  can  endure  of  which  the  naturally 
energetic  elements  are  sceptical.  Some 
faith  it  must  have  or  else  it  is  doomed. 
If  the  faith  in  worldly  goods  should  go 
and  nothing  take  its  place,  ours  will  be 
doomed,  unless  a  spirit  gives  Hght  from 
beyond  and  help  be  found  in  the  saving 
remnant  which  have  not  bowed  the  knee 
to  Baal. 

The  crying  need  of  the  time  is  for  some- 
thing to  shake  men  out  of  their  compla- 
cency. In  the  Hteral  sense  we  need  seers 
\  — men  who  can  see  things  as  they  are  and 
burn  into  men  the  facts  of  life  in  this  twen- 
tieth century.  This  work  is  actually  being 
done  by  a  host  of  writers,  many  of  them 
non-Christian.     It   will   be  said  doubtless. 


BABYLON  117 

by  the  practical  man  of  wealth,  that  how- 
ever they  differ,  they  are  all  alike  in 
being  dreamers.  Thank  God  for  that. 
For  a  world  sunk  in  material  satisfaction, 
a  society  throttled  with  comfort,  it  is  only 
when  the  old  men  see  visions  and  the 
young  men  dream  dreams  that  there  is 
much  hope  of  deliverance.  For  that  is  the 
point.  Deliverance  is  what  they  all  cry  V 
for.  There  is  something  wrong;  as  a  man 
of  science  (not  a  Christian)  put  it  to  me, 
^'this  world  has  got  appendicitis" 

Religion  is  far  from  being  the  only 
scheme  of  deliverance  —  our  social  schemes 
are  also  that.  Nor  is  the  Christian  the  ^ 
only  religion  of  redemption;  that  is  also 
the  note  of  Buddhism.  But  it  is  something 
to  have  it  recognised  that  it  is  redemption 
that  is  needful,  and  not  mere  continuance; 
for  progress  in  the  sense  of  development 
of  existing  principles  will  not  suflfice  to 
secure  well-being.  It  is  a  change  that  is 
needed,  a  revolution  of  the  spirit;  and  if  "^ 
this  once  be  reahzed,  the  strength  of  the 
claims  of  the  Christian  Church  is  in  a 
fair  way  to  be  felt.  Of  the  social  reformer 
we  may  ask,  "  Where  are  you  likely  to  get 


118     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

the  driving  force  to  bring  about  those 
tremendous  changes  unless  you  have  a 
religious  faith,  or  something  very  Hke  it? 
Change  the  economic  system  of  society 
without  somehow  changing  the  passion  and 
the  pride  of  man  and  you  will  but  change 
the  ways  in  which  the  strong  will  exploit 
the  weak.  Without  some  change  of  heart, 
some  fresh  orientation  of  the  spirit,  how  are 
your  great  social  changes  to  be  effected 
or  effectual?"  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
admit  so  much  and  look  to  some  system 
like  Buddhism  for  deliverance,  I  think  the 
chances  in  its  favour  are  very  small,  and 
that,  even  were  it  purged  of  all  local  asso- 
ciations. I  do  not  think  that  the  West  will 
ever  accept  such  a  system,  which,  though 
it  indeed  promises  redemption,  promises 
it  as  a  dehverance  from  life,  (personahty) 
whereas  the  Christian  redemption  is  a 
deliverance  from  evil,  from  that  canker 
which  impedes  the  upward  spring  of  Ufe. 
In  our  age,  with  all  its  unregulated  ideals, 
with  its  fear  of  materialism  and  pathetic 
unrest,  there  is  one  craving  in  which  there 
is  hope  —  the  cry  for  Ufe,  hfe,  more  life. 
This  is  in  various  ways  the  secure  and 


BABYLON  119 

unassailable  support  of  all  those  schemes 
of  reform  which  are  rife  among  us.  It 
may  mean  the  claim  that  even  the  humblest 
shall  share  in  the  opportunities  of  living  a 
full  and  varied  life;  it  may  mean  the  cry 
(not  in  itseK  illegitimate)  for  full  develop- 
ment of  individuahty;  it  may  mean  a  cry 
for  something  deeper,  some  ground  on  which 
to  rest,  some  home  of  the  soul  wherein 
the  spirit  may  spread  its  wings  and  slake 
its  thirst:  so  far  as  it  does,  (and  at  bottom 
there  is  always  something  of  this  element 
hidden)  it  can  only  drive  men  on  to  that 
source  of  all  Hfe.  He  came  not  only  that 
our  joy  might  be  full,  but  that  men  "  might 
have  Hfe,  and  might  have  it  more  abun- 
dantly." The  need  is  for  some  scheme  of 
deUverance,  some  new  hope.  The  choice 
Ues  between  schemes  Kmited  to  this  world, 
or  schemes  which  give  redemption  at  the 
cost  of  personal  existence,  and  the  Chris- 
tian scheme,  which  "preaches  peace  to 
them  that  are  far  oflf  and  to  them  that  are 
nigh,"  because  it  worships  One  who  is 
not  only  the  Light,  but  is  also  the  Life 
of  men,  and  not  only  their  Life,  but  also 
their  Saviour. 


no     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

It  is  the  faith  which  accepts  and  trans- 
forms pain,  which  admits  and  consecrates 
freedom,  which  faces  and  conquers  sin, 
holding  the  truths  of  Hf  e  not  in  dialectic  con- 
sistency, but  in  practical  harmony,  which 
alone,  amid  the  wrecks  of  systems  and  the 
profound  disillusion  of  men,  has  any  hope 
or  prospect  of  winning  them  to  peace. 
That  faith  of  the  Cross  it  is  that  alone  can 
satisfy,  and  it  is,  while  akin  to  the  other 
faiths,  more  unlike  them  than  like,  and  while 
in  moral  exhortation  not  unlike  the  nobler 
philosophies,  at  bottom  something  differ- 
ent from  any,  something  more  splendid, 
more  difficult,  more  unfathomable,  because 
its  essence  and  its  ground  are  other-worldly, 
its  God  One  who  is  also  man,  and  its 
supreme  act  the  execution  of  a  criminal. 
Something  of  this  uniqueness  I  shall  hope 
to  discuss  in  our  next  lecture. 


LECTURE  III 

CALVARY  OR  THE  CHALLENGE  OF 
THE  CROSS 

Kn  van  Eyck  in  the  Adoration  of  the  Lamb 
has  given  to  the  world  what  is  often  said 
to  be  its  greatest  painting.  All  of  you 
know  either  by  sight  or  reproduction  that 
glory  of  colour  and  composition.  No  one, 
however  far  removed  from  that  faith  which 
alone  made  such  a  picture  possible,  but 
is  at  once  awed  by  its  presentment  of  the 
Victim  slain  from  before  the  foundation 
of  the  world,  and  its  exaltation  of  that 
sacramental  chaHce  in  which  the  Blood  is 
made  available  for  all  ages  and  every  con- 
dition. For  it  is  not  the  crowd  of  wor- 
shippers in  all  their  bravery  of  blue  and 
scarlet  on  which  the  eye  rests,  nor  even  the 
far  green  distances  with  their  castles,  which 
make  the  wonder  of  the  picture,  but  the 
figures  in  the  centre,  the  altar  with  its 

121 


122     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

image  of  a  Lamb  and  the  chalice  flowing 
blood.  There  summed  up  in  an  image  at 
once  bold  and  compelling,  is  the  whole 
notion  of  Evangelical  CathoHc  Christianity, 
stretching  right  through  history,  binding 
together  the  ages  in  a  unity  of  adoring  love. 
Saints  and  monks,  emperors,  kings,  popes 
and  bishops  and  cardinals,  and  all  the  pro- 
cession of  knights  and  virgins  uniting  in  one 
supreme  act  of  worship  gaze  upon  the  Lamb; 
so  that  as  one  looks,  one  almost  hears  the 
words:  "Worthy  is  the  Lamb  that  was  slain 
to  receive  power  and  riches  and  wisdom  and 
strength  and  honour  and  glory  and  bless- 
ing. And  every  creature  which  is  in  heaven, 
and  on  the  earth  and  under  the  earth,  and 
such  as  are  in  the  sea,  and  all  that  are  in 
them,  heard  I  saying.  Blessing  and  honour 
and  glory  and  power  be  unto  Him  that 
sitteth  upon  the  throne  and  unto  the 
Lamb  for  ever  and  ever." 

That  painting  represents,  with  enduring 
beauty,  acts  which  are  repeated  in  every 
church  and  chapel  of  Christendom.  For 
whether  a  man  hold  high  or  low  views  of 
the  Sacrament  of  the  Altar,  all  who  hold 
to  historic  Christianity  would  be  at  one 


CALVARY  123 


in  admitting  that  in  the  act  of  communion 
they  had  hold  of  God.  I  take  the  Eucharist 
as  a  starting-point,  since  this  act,  even  by 
the  admission  of  our  adversaries,  is  treated 
as  the  centre  of  the  Christian  cult,  and  be- 
cause it  takes  to  its  highest  point  the  idea 
of  worship;  and  in  such  a  way  that  it  can- 
not be  compared  with  some  purely  inward 
process  like  meditation,  which  may  be  said 
to  have  some  efficacy,  even  though  there 
were  no  outside  forces  to  pray  to,  no  voice 
nor  any  that  answered.  For  what  does  the 
Eucharist  involve?  Even  the  simplest  per- 
son who  receives  it  with  faith  implies  cer- 
tain behefs  by  his  act.  His  presence  asserts 
this  at  least:  that  God,  the  ultimate  reality, 
however  much  more  than  personal,  is  yet 
so  far  personal  that  He  can  enter  into  inti- 
macy with  men;  that  man  with  his  limited 
freedom  has  used  it  wrongly  and  is  through 
that  false  independence  in  a  state  of  misery, 
from  which  he  can  not  deliver  himself; 
that  such  deliverance  has,  however,  taken 
place  by  the  very  act  of  God,  who  has 
made  the  most  marvellous  exercise  of  His 
omnipotence  by  "emptying  Himself  and 
taking  the  form  of  a  servant"  and  dying 


124     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

as  a  common  criminal;  that  death,  how- 
ever, was  not  the  end,  but  the  beginning, 
for  it  was  succeeded  by  a  rising  again  and 
a  continued  life  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father, 
that  is  in  union  with  the  sacred  heart  of  all 
reahty;  and  that  hfe  communicates  itself  to 
us  through  prayer  and  the  sacramental  gift. 
It  is  fair  to  add  that  among  those  who 
hold  to  Evangelical  historic  Christianity 
the  pure  Zwinglians  attach  no  value  to  the 
sacramental  gift,  but  even  they  would  ad- 
mit it  to  be  the  culmination  of  prayer  and 
the  most  distinctively  Christian  service. 

What  I  want  here  to  emphasize  is  the 
astonishing  audacity  of  these  assumptions. 
They  are  irreconcilable  not  only  with 
materialism,  but  with  every  non-miraculous 
theory  of  religion.  They  involve  a  view 
alike  of  this  world  and  the  other  quite 
alien  from  the  closed  circle  contemplated 
by  the  materialist  philosopher,  or  even 
the  vague  harmony  of  the  Pantheistic 
monist.  They  assert  the  supernatural 
character  of  the  events  which  led  to  the 
founding  of  the  Church,  and  the  immor- 
tality of  the  individual  spirit.  They  are 
not  to   be  reconciled   with   any  form   of 


CALVARY  125 

Pantheism,  though  they  of  course  admit 
and  to  some  extent  involve  a  doctrine  of 
Divine  Immanence.  All  Christians  believe 
in  Pantheism  —  "for  in  Him  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being."  They  are 
opposed,  Hke  the  facts  of  our  personal  life, 
to  the  notion  that  the  course  of  things  is 
one  of  purely  inevitable  sequences;  and 
as  against  the  modern  tendency  to  deify 
the  undoubted  fact  of  the  continuity  of  life 
and  ignore  the  equally  undoubted  fact  of 
the  uniqueness  of  single  moments  and  the 
creative  activity  of  the  self,  they  assert 
the  catastrophic,  absolute  newness  of  events 
and  individuals  and  the  value  of  each  man's 
soul  not  as  a  means  but  as  an  end  —  some- 
thing for  itself.  They  do  not,  indeed, 
assert  man's  entire  independence.  The 
whole  notion  of  the  fall  and  redemption 
means  that  our  freedom,  though  real,  is 
partial  and  a  goal  toward  which  we  strive. 

"Man  partly  is  and  wholly  hopes  to  be." 

But  they  assert  such  independence  as 
is  involved  in  the  self-direction  of  our 
acts  and  the  power  to  ignore  God  if  we 
will.     Neither    pure    socialism    nor    abso- 


N 


126     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

lute  individualism  finds  warrant  in  the 
Gospel.  * 

That  appeals,  indeed,  to  each  man  as  such 
and  assures  him  of  his  eternal  worth.  He 
is  worth  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus  Christ. 
But  again  it  does  not  appeal  to  man  as  a 
mere  unrelated  unit,  but  as  a  member  of 
society.  In  this  it  is  true  not  only  to  the 
earliest,  but  also  to  the  very  latest  social 
and  political  reflection,  as  it  is  also  to  the 
daily  hfe  of  man  in  family,  in  school  or 
college,  in  club  or  union,  in  state  or  nation; 
only  it  offers  him  his  life  in  that  one  so- 
ciety, whose  raison  d'etre  hes  in  the  other 
world. 

That  is  the  point  —  the  other-worldly 
nature  of  the  Christian  claim.  To  return 
to  our  symbol,  the  Eucharist  involves  that 
claim  in  a  form  at  once  social  and  indi- 
vidual and  so  startling  and  direct,  as  to 
leave  no  doubt  of  the  fact.  Consequently 
it  is  a  stumbling  block  to  many,  who  other- 
wise accept  that  view  of  the  Faith  I  am 
putting  forward.  Indeed  the  sacramental 
idea  has  been  so  closely  bound  up  with 
the  life  of  the  Church  that  it  seems  un- 
reasonable to  suppose  that  you  can  cut 


CALVARY  127 

this  out  while  preserving  all  the  other  super- 
natural elements.  As  a  fact,  we  see  more 
and  more  that  along  with  this  vanish  all  the 
others,  in  course  of  time.  In  this,  however, 
the  arresting  challenge  of  the  Sacraments 
and  the  claim  that  therein  God  gives  Him- 
self to  man,  there  is  but  an  extension  of 
what  is  involved  in  every  prayer  to  God 
through  the  name  of  Jesus.  For  it  is  on 
the  uniqueness  of  Jesus  that  all  depends. 
Church  and  Sacraments  exist  only  as  the 
expression  of  that  hfe  here,  the  extensions 
of  the  Incarnation  as  they  have  been  called. 
It  is  this,  the  Cross  of  Christ,  which  is  so 
startling,  "madness  to  the  Greeks,  to  the 
Jews  offensive,"  and  always  will  be.  This 
faith  it  is  which  defies  those  attempts,  which 
were  they  not  pathetic  would  be  ridiculous, 
to  assimilate  the  Christian  "way"  to  any 
of  these  humanist  codes  of  morals  or  social 
ethics  or  mere  theism,  which  bear  to  it  a 
superficial  resemblance.  Let  us  avoid  the- 
ological language;  but  I  think  we  can  say 
that  so  far  as  creed  goes,  a  man  is  a  Chris- 
tian or  a  non-Christian  so  far  as  he  can 
enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  hymn  "When  I 
survey  the  wondrous  Cross."    What  a  gulf 


128     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

that  makes,  not  of  piety,  but  of  outlook, 
between  the  two. 

The  non-Christian  may  be  the  more 
self-devoted,  kinder,  stronger,  even  the 
more  religious  of  the  two;  very  likely  he 
has  fewer  skeletons  in  his  cupboards,  fewer 
sins  that  are  shames  to  cover  up  than  I 
have.  Yet  he  is  different,  with  a  different 
ideal  of  humihty.  He  would  probably 
despise  me  for  mine.  I  believe,  as  the 
non-Christian  does  not,  that  my  life  is  a 
dialogue,  lived  in  intimacy  with  One  who 
lived  as  man  and  died  to  restore  the 
peace  broken  by  my  act  and  deed.  I 
believe,  and  he  does  not,  that  in  Jesus  I 
have  a  new  Hfe,  and  that  the  centre  of  that 
life  is  not  here.  Those  words  "Ye  are  dead 
and  your  hfe  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God" 
are  words  of  tremendous  import  and  must 
at  least  imply  that  the  Christian  as  a  son 
of  the  Resurrection  contemplates  life  from 
a  standpoint  beyond,  and  finds  his  motive 
force  there.  He  is  one,  as  it  were,  who  has 
come  back,  but  only  for  a  little  while;  the 
Christian's  life  is  a  sharing  of  the  great 
forty  days.  Moreover,  that  life  I  believe 
to  be  nourished  by  a  gift  as  real,  though 


CALVARY  129 

spiritual,  as  the  physical  bread  which  sup- 
ports my  animal  life,  and  this  gift  implies 
the  frequent  irruptions  of  the  Divine  into 
this  world.  Also,  and  perhaps  this  point 
is  the  most  shining,  this  Ufe,  though  not 
to  be  shunned  or  despised,  is  but  an  epi- 
sode in  a  career  which  knows  no  end  to  its 
adventures 

"With  ever  a  new  surprise 
And  clouds  eternally  new." 

Now  such  beUefs  create  an  almost  unbridge- 
able chasm  between  the  Christian  and  other 
men.  As  S.  Paul  said,  "If  Christ  be  not 
risen,  we  are  of  all  men  most  miserable." 
If  Jesus  be  no  Saviour,  and  the  other  world 
no  home,  then  we  labour  under  the  most 
lamentable  of  all  delusions.  So  far  as  we 
^re  really  trying  to  live  this  Christian  hfe, 
we  are  directing  all  our  actions  on  the 
ghastliest  of  shams.  We  have  staked  all 
for  nothing  —  not  even  an  off-chance.  How 
it  is  that  our  faith  appears  aught  but  sheer 
lunacy  to  those  who  hold  it  not,  I  cannot 
for  the  life  of  me  imagine.  I  suppose  it 
is  due  to  our  positive  faith  being  weak 
and  our  actual  worldliness  so  strong.  There 
is  indeed  no  reason  why  Christians  and 

10 


130     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  BOADS 

others  should  not  unite  for  many  things 
which  have  to  be  done.  In  this  world  we 
have  to  eat  and  drink  and  dress,  whatever 
comes  after.  But  that  men  should  treat 
the  distinction  as  unimportant  or  indif- 
ferent, or  still  worse,  that  the  Christian 
should  do  so,  and  should  suppose  he  can 
reduce  within  narrow  limits  the  difference 
between  himself  and,  say,  a  high-minded 
idealist,  is  only  to  be  explained  by  our 
practical  refusal  to  live  as  we  pray.  All 
this  is  less  true  of  those  who  believe  in  a 
world  of  individual  immortality.  But  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  that  belief  is  held  so 
little  outside  the  Christian  Church  and 
unguaranteed  by  the  Resurrection,  that  we 
need  not  seriously  consider  it.  Despite 
the  prevalence  of  certain  habits,  we  are  no 
longer  living  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

Let  us  consider  two  tempers  of  mind 
both  found  alike  among  Christians  and 
non-Christians;  the  one  I  will  call  the 
world-accepting  and  the  other  the  world- 
renouncing  temper.  We  shall  see  that 
they  differ  toto  coelo  according  as  they  are 
held  by  a  Christian  or  by  an  unbeliever; 
while  their  resemblance  is  superficial.    Upon 


CALVARY  131 

every  act  and  every  art  of  human  life,  upon 
its  amusements,  its  purposes  and  all  its 
interests,  the  other-worldly  reference  sets 
its  stamp.  If  ''Light  be  the  only  subject 
of  a  picture,"  then  the  light  that  shines 
from  Calvary  makes  a  new  picture,  and 
though  every  outward  object  and  every 
isolated  act  of  two  men  would  be  the  same, 
yet  the  total  picture  would  differ,  as  much 
as  a  landscape  of  lake  and  mountain  seen 
in  the  rose  of  a  July  dawn  or  the  grey  chill 
of  a  November  fog.  Like  S.  Bernard,  who, 
passing  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  did  not  notice 
the  water  or  the  sky,  so  deeply  was  he 
absorbed,  the  other-worldly  person  may 
regard  the  glory  of  seas  and  skies,  the 
harmonies  of  home,  and  all  its  interests 
as  so  many  hindrances  —  things  which  get 
in  his  way,  keeping  back  the  day  when  he 
shall  pierce  behind  the  veil.  To  such  an 
one  life  seems  but  a  waiting  time  till  he 
sees  God  face  to  face  and  is  "satisfied." 
As  S.  Paul  put  it,  "having  a  desire  to 
depart  and  be  with  Christ,  which  is  far 
better."  Life  here  in  such  a  view  is  a  yis 
alter y  a  duty  to  be  done,  and  delight  comes 
only  by-and-bye.    The  mystics  speak  like 


132     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

this,  or  many  of  them.  It  is  clear  that 
what  is  said  represents  a  real  experience, 
that  they  feel  that  the  supreme  cross  of  all 
is  life  on  earth,  the  sense  of  separation. 
This  hfe  they  fill  with  toil  and  sacrifice, 
and  the  tortures  of  the  martyrs  are  not  to 
be  compared  with  the  fire  of  the  longing 
that  consumes  them,  the  sense  that  "here 
they  have  no  continuing  city."  As  they 
wander  in  life's  ways,  to  them  it  is  all  one 
whether  the  path  is  smooth  or  rough;  they 
hardly  feel  the  cutting  stones,  driven  by 
that  irresistible  desire  within,  the  nostalgia 
of  the  infinite.  I  am  not  saying  that  this 
temper  is  a  right  one  or  that  there  is  not  a 
higher  stage,  that  set  down  by  Dante  in 
the  words 

"In  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra  pace" 

where  the  soul  is  so  deeply  possessed  by 
God  that  life  or  death  is  indifferent,  and 
there  where  it  is  at  any  moment  is  the 
place  nearest  Him;  just  as  in  the  perfect 
Jesuit  "La  sancta  obbedienza  fa  d'ogni 
luogo  Paradiso." 

As  a  fact,  however,  the  world-renouncing 
temper  exists.     It  may  lead  to  a  morbid 


CALVARY  133 

contempt  of  life  or  a  cloistral  detachment 
from  human  activity.  But  that  it  forms 
one  element  in  the  experience  of  many 
Christians  would  appear  evident  from  the 
number  and  popularity  of  the  hymns,  dat- 
ing from  all  ages,  which  express  it.  We 
may  decry  these  other-worldly  aims,  yet 
there  must  be  some  instinct,  deep  seated  in 
human  nature,  which  could  unite  men  of 
such  varying  ecclesiastical  affinity  as  the 
author  of  "  O  Quanta  Quaha"  of  the 
twelfth  century,  or  the  "Urbs  Beata  "  of  the 
thirteenth,  ** Jerusalem  my  happy  home" 
of  the  sixteenth,  or  "I'm  but  a  stranger 
here"  of  the  nineteenth.  Doubtless  many 
people  enjoy  singing  them  who  are  very  far 
from  feeling  "hke  poor  exiles  on  Babylon's 
strand"  and  would  be  no  fonder  of  their 
heavenly  than  they  are  of  their  earthly 
home,  except  for  singing  purposes;  but 
there  must  be  many  to  whom  they  appeal 
or  they  would  not  continue  to  be  sung. 

Now  let  us  consider  the  opposite  stand- 
point, the  world-embracing  temper,  as  seen 
by  a  Christian.  Just  because  of  its  other- 
worldly reference,  this  life  is  seen  as  having 
not  less  but  more  value.     Our   life   now 


134     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

and  here  is  to  us  the  revelation  of  the 
Eternal.  Here  in  a  world  of  wonder  and 
ceaseless  change  we  are  set,  and  we  are  to 
make  the  most  of  it  all,  like  boys  of  school- 
days. Just  as  the  onward  reference  of 
youth,  so  far  from  hindering  rather  en- 
hances the  zest  and  meaning  of  life  during 
training  (unless  by  a  calculating  meanness 
we  ruin  the  present),  so  with  the  Christian 
hope,  for  it  shews  us  every  act  as  having 
an  enduring  as  well  as  a  transient  worth. 
The  hues  of  the  hills  and  the  seas,  every 
scene  or  tone  of  beauty,  is  no  butterfly 
delight,  but  is  a  sacrament  of  the  Love 
behind.  Art  and  all  embodiments  of  im- 
agery are  not  less  but  more  valuable  because 
they  are  not  in  themselves  perfect,  but  hints 
and  glimpses  of  the  "  altogether  lovely." 
This  is  the  true  difference  between  romantic 
and  classical  art,  illustrated  by  "Siat  be- 
tween Gothic  and  Renaissance  buildings, 
of  which  the  former  has  been  called  **  ap- 
parent pictures  of  unapparent  realities" 
and  the  latter  "simple  representation." 
The  former  is  never  quite  so  perfect  and 
rounded,  because  it  is  shot  through  with 
hues  of  the  eternal.     It  is  never  absolutely 


CALVARY  135 

itself,  because  its  meaning  is  to  be  a  symbol. 
It  is  great  more  by  what  it  suggests  than  by 
what  it  states,  and  its  profoundest  beauty 
leaves  the  spirit  still  athirst.  It  embodies, 
whether  in  buildings  or  in  verse  or  in 
painting,  the  mystery  of  all  creation;  and 
however  irreligious  the  artist,  the  work 
reminds  us  that  the  true  home  of  the  spirit 
is  "the  land  that  is  very  far  off,"  and  yet 
for  that  very  reason  can  sound  in  echoes 
on  earth,  in  the  dying  fall  of  a  melody,  in 
the  haunting  inscrutable  beauty  of  a  lyric, 
or  in  some  dream  in  stone,  which  makes 
the  spirit  at  once  satisfied  and  overflowing, 
so  that  the  heart  all  but  bursts  from  a  joy 
that  is  yet  only  the  other  side  of  pain.  "I 
saw  thee  and  I  sought  for  thee;  I  saw  thee 
and  I  wanted  thee,"  says  the  mystic;  and 
that  might  be  taken  as  the  motto  of  all 
the  noblest  art  in  every  age,  greatest  always 
in  imperfection,  conquering  by  failure; 
and  hke  the  symbol  of  it  all,  the  Cross 
shining  splendid  out  of  the  very  stuff  of 
misery.  But  this  world-embracing  temper 
does  not  stop  here.  It  goes  through  all 
things.  The  Christian  may  find  in  every 
wholesome  human  relation  not  only  more 


136     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

delight  but  deeper  meaning  than  anyone 
else.  Earthly  fatherhood  is  a  nobler  thing, 
because  it  is  a  shadow  of  the  Divine,  and 
human  love  glows  more  brightly  when  seen 
as  a  symbol  of  the  joy  that  burns  at  the 
heart  of  things.  It  is  not  to  the  mere 
butterfly,  but  to  the  immortal  spirit  that 
the  treasure  house,  even  of  this  world,  is 
open.  He  is  a  child  in  the  stage  of  life, 
playing  about  and  learning  till  he  reach 
maturity.  To  him  belongs  the  universe, 
past  and  present  and  to  come,  in  a  way 
that  it  cannot  do  to  "the  poor  pensioner 
on  the  bounty  of  an  hour."  If  we  are 
not  immortal,  we  may  be  possessed  by 
the  world,  we  cannot  possess  it;  we  are 
strangers,  it  is  our  enemy;  we  take  a  little 
and  then  are  gone.  If  we  are  to  go  on,  we 
can  appropriate  it,  make  it  our  own,  so  that 
its  beauty  and  its  sorrow,  all  its  mystery 
and  its  splendid  acts,  become  part  of  us 
and  shine  for  ever  in  a  spirit  that  lives  with 
God.  Even  worldliness  demands  other- 
worldliness  to  justify  it.  Only  the  im- 
mortals have  a  right  to  feel  at  home  in  this 
world.  We  are  like  a  boy  at  school  or 
college  who  shares  all  his  life,  past,  present. 


CALVARY  1S7 

and  to  come,  and  carries  it  on  in  the  whole 

course  of  his  career;    we  are  to  carry  out 

the  treasures  of   the  spirit,  for  they  are 

part  of  us;  and  so  of  us,  and  us  alone,  is  it 

true,  as  S.  Paul  said,  "All  things  are  yours, 

whether  Paul  or  ApoUos,  or  life  or  death, 

or    things    present   or   things   to   come  — 

all    are   yours    and   ye   are    Christ's    and 

Christ  is  God's." 

1 

We  have  thus  considered  the  contrasted 
tempers,  the  Puritan  and  the  Sacramental, 
as  exhibited  among  Christians;  let  us 
compare  them  with  the  similar  condition, 
as  seen  in  others.  Compare  the  world- 
renouncing  attitude  of  some  Christians 
w  ith  that  of  the  Buddhists,  or  the  Western 
pessimist  who  preaches  a  doctrine  sub- 
stantially the  same  and  treats  individuality 
as  evil.  Such  a  Christian  as  the  "exile 
on  Babylon's  strand"  is,  it  is  true,  the 
stranger  who  laments  "that  earth  is  a 
desert  drear"  and  looks  to  "heaven  as  his 
home."  But  he  does  all  this  not  because 
he  wants  less,  but  because  he  wants  more 
life,  including  his  own.  It  is  the  imper- 
fection of  the  world  taken  even  at  its  best 


138     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

that  drives  him  to  seek  a  "better  country." 
He  is  Hke  a  child,  who  cannot  play  the 
games  which  commonly  delight  him,  be- 
cause he  is  consumed  with  excitement  over 
the  feast  to  which  he  is  going.  The  good 
has  almost  ceased  to  be  a  good  because 
he  knows  there  is  something  better  in  a 
short  time;  just  as  a  thirsty  man  may 
refuse  lemonade,  if  he  has  been  told  that 
champagne  is  on  the  way. 

The  pessimist  on  the  other  hand  declares 
life  to  be  an  evil  quand  meme  and  there 
can  be  no  deliverance  till  it  be  extinguished. 
Hartmann  and  his  followers  can  treat  con- 
sciousness as  an  evil  and  look  to  the  day 
when  the  universe,  weary  of  its  initial 
error,  will  swallow  its  tail  —  and  all  be 
done.  The  Christian  says  that  life  is  a 
good  thing,  but  has  been  marred  by  sin; 
and  suffers  also  from  the  growing  pains  of 
youth.  The  one  is  like  the  new  boy  dream- 
ing of  the  day  when  he  will  bowl  for  the 
eleven,  and  sustaining  himself  by  the  dream 
when  things  are  very  unlike  it.  The  other 
is  the  type  which  at  the  first  onset  of  diffi- 
culty writes  home  and  begs  to  be  removed. 
Both  these  look  forward  to  death;  the  one 


CALVARY  139 

because  he  thinks  it  "closes  all,"  the  other 
because  he  knows  it  does  not.  The  fault 
of  the  one  is  impatience,  petulance,  the 
refusal  of  the  sensitive  artist  to  produce 
because  he  can  never  achieve  his  ideal; 
he  is  the  man  who  loses  all  interest  in  his 
work  as  soon  as  he  has  planned  his  holiday. 
The  other  believes  that  things  in  them- 
selves are  hopeless  and  the  one  goal  anni- 
hilation. If  either  went  to  the  practical 
extreme,  the  Christian  would  commit  sui- 
cide from  an  unbalanced  hope,  from  a 
desire  to  see  the  other  side  at  once;  the 
non-Christian  would  do  so  from  an  un- 
reheved  despair,  in  order  to  be  rid  of  an 
existence  found  intolerable.  Christian  pessi- 
mism is  a  pessimism  secundum  quid  and 
treats  this  world  as  a  purgatory.  True 
pessimism  is  pessimism  simpliciter  and 
treats  personal  existence  as  hell. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  practical  maxims 
that  attach  to  the  two  types,  the  Christian 
and  the  non-Christian.  No  greater  error 
has  been  made  than  that  which  confounds 
the  Christian  and  the  non-Christian  doc- 
trine of  self-sacrifice.  Modern  altruism 
teaches  what  is  really  a  denial  of  individu- 


140     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

ality  and  tries  to  destroy  "the  will  to  live" 
by  substituting  "the  will  to  love."  The 
^  Gospel  declares  that  a  man  must  die  to 
live,  but  it  neither  states  nor  implies  the 
destruction  of  the  self.  All  false  asceticism 
finds  its  root  in  the  non-Christian  view  of 
self-sacrifice;  all  true  asceticism  in  the 
Christian.  For  it  is  the  ground  truth  of 
all  education;  it  is  the  earHest  lesson  of 
the  schoolboy  that  pain  must  not  only  be 
faced,  but  transmuted  through  courage 
into  joy  and  strength.  It  is  the  result  of 
the  truth  that  self  can  only  find  itself  in 
love,  and  this  involves  surrender,  giving, 
cost.  This,  however,  does  not  mean  that 
personality  is  annihilated,  or  that  the 
individual  is  to  be  lost  in  a  higher  unity. 
On  the  contrary  love,  even  in  its  most 
\  sacrificial  forms,  exalts  and  develops  indi- 
viduality and  strengthens  the  will.  One 
argument  for  immortality  is  the  difficulty 
of  believing  that  certain  characters  aflame 
with  love  can  be  as  though  they  never  were. 
But  it  is  not  hard  to  hold  such  a  creed  about 
a  very  selfish  man. 

I  think  that  some  of  the  animus  displayed 
by  Nietzsche  against  Christian  ethics  was 


CALVARY  141 

due  to  an  error  of  this  sort.  He  mistook 
Schopenhauer's  doctrine  of  self-annihilation 
for  Christian  sacrifice;  in  a  word  he  con- 
fused pessimistic  with  educational  asceti- 
cism, and  most  of  his  attack  is  vitiated  by 
this  confusion.  On  the  other  hand  it  must 
be  allowed  that  Christians  of  all  schools 
have  used  and  do  use  language  about  self- 
sacrifice  which  leads  to  misconception. 
Some  apparently  believe  in  a  notion  of 
sacrifice  which  teaches  not  the  develop- 
ment of  personality  through  self-giving, 
but  its  annihilation;  and  this  really  treats 
individuahty  as  an  evil.  That  at  least 
is  the  logical  import  of  their  words,  and  it 
has  led  to  disastrous  consequences,  harmful 
not  only  to  health,  but  to  morals.  I  think 
it  is  the  fundamental  error  of  the  Jesuit 
system,  for  it  is  obvious  that  if  complete 
sacrifice  is  demanded,  the  conscience  must 
go  too.i 

Let  us  take  now  the  counter  tendency, 
the  world-accepting,  for  that  also  exists 
on  a  non-Christian  no  less  than  on  a  Chris- 
tian foundation.  Yet  how  different!  By 
the  Christian  the  life  is  accepted  as  God's 


142     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

will  for  him,  a  state  of  probation.  This 
world  is  in  all  its  details  a  sacrament,  the 
outward  and  visible  sign  of  an  inward  and 
spiritual  grace.  The  beauty  of  nature  and 
art,  the  acts  of  human  work  and  play, 
friendship  and  heroism  and  forgiveness, 
all  are  noble,  because  they  point  beyond 
and  are  caught  up  in  the  life  of  a  spirit  that 
passes  from  earthly  society  to  heavenly. 
As  I  said  just  now,  they  are  worthy,  but 
relatively  and  provisionally  worthy,  rather 
because  of  what  they  hint  than  of  what 
they  say.  They  are  suggestions  of  eternity 
in  statements  of  time.  To  the  non-Chris- 
tian, however,  they  are  all  in  all.  He,  to 
whom  no  further  life  is  promised,  may 
resolve  to  make  the  most  of  what  there  is, 
just  because  he  has  nothing  more.  He 
may  accept  the  world  as  a  place  wherein 
to  be  as  happy  as  he  may  and  echo  the 
Carpe  diem  philosophy  of  Horace  and  many 
another. 

"Ah,  make  the  most  of  what  we  yet  may  spend, 
Before  ye  too  into  the  dust  descend; 

Dust  unto  dust,  and  under  dust  to  lie 
Sans  wine,  sans  song,  sans  singer,  and — sans  end!" 


CALVARY  143 

The  pessimism  which  underhes  the  voluptu- 
aries' philosophy  patent  in  Omar  is  yet 
more  shining  in  the  well  known  epilogue 
of  Walter  Pater  to  the  Renaissance, 
"Every  moment  some  form  grows  perfect 
in  hand  or  face;  some  tone  on  the  hills 
or  the  sea  is  choicer  than  the  rest;  some 
mood  of  passion  or  insight  or  intellectual 
excitement  is  irresistibly  real  and  attrac- 
tive for  us,  —  for  that  moment  only.  Not 
the  fruit  of  experience,  but  experience 
itseK,  is  the  end.  A  counted  number  of 
pulses  only  is  given  to  us  of  a  variegated 
dramatic  Hfe.  How  may  we  see  in  them 
all  that  is  to  be  seen  in  them  by  the  finest 
senses?  How  shall  we  pass  most  quickly 
from  point  to  point,  and  be  present  always 
at  the  focus  where  the  greatest  number  of 
vital  forces  unite  in  their  purest  energy?  .  .. 
"While  all  melts  under  our  feet,  we  may 
well  catch  at  any  exquisite  passion,  or  any 
contribution  to  knowledge  that  seems  by 
a  hfted  horizon  to  set  the  spirit  free  for 
a  moment,  or  any  stirring  of  the  senses, 
strange  dyes,  strange  colours,  and  curious 
odours,  or  work  of  the  artist's  hands,  or 
the  face  of  one's  friend.    Not  to  discrimin- 


144     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

ate  every  moment  some  passionate  attitude 
in  those  about  us  and  in  the  brilliancy  of 
their  gifts  some  tragic  dividing  of  forces 
on  their  ways  is,  on  this  short  day  of 
frost  and  sun  to  sleep  before  evening.  .  .  . 

"We  are  all  condamnes  as  Victor  Hugo 
says,  we  are  all  under  sentence  of  death, 
but  with  a  sort  of  indefinite  reprieve  — 
les  hommes  sont  tout  condamnes  a  mort  mais 
avec  des  sursis  indefinis  —  we  have  an 
interval  and  then  our  place  knows  us  no 
more.  Some  spend  this  interval  in  listless- 
ness,  some  in  high  passions,  the  wisest,  at 
least  among  the  children  of  this  world, 
in  art  and  song.  For  our  one  chance  lies 
in  expanding  that  interval,  in  getting  as 
many  pulsations  as  possible  into  the  given 
time." 

True,  the  world-accepting  temper  is  not 
tied  to  this  Epicurean  form.  It  may  take 
on  the  austere  tone  of  the  Stoics  or  their 
modern  imitators,  the  attitude  familiar 
to  most  of  us  in  Matthew  Arnold's  poems. 
Or  again  its  votary  may  adopt  the  Positivist 
humanitarian  attitude,  a  position  curiously 
like  one  side  of  Christian  ethics  in  the 
enthusiasm    for    humanity    and    sense    of 


CALVARY  145 

social  ties,  and  also  in  some  practical  views, 
such  as  those  on  marriage.  At  bottom, 
however,  it  is  quite  different,  and  though 
ennobled  by  high  and  earnest  endeavour, 
is  without  that  vein  of  hope  and  gaiety 
which  clings  to  the  Christian.  With  the 
burdens  of  the  human  race  it  has  sympathy 
and  enters  into  its  toils  and  its  sorrows, 
but  this  burden  is  to  it  a  burden  and  nothing 
more.  It  has  no  Heavenly  Father  to  trust 
to,  and  when  disinterested  must  spend 
itself  in  a  fever  of  activity  in  order  to  effect 
its  purposes.  It  can  never  rest,  for  it  has 
only  itself  to  trust  to. 

The  truth  is  this.  The  doctrine  of  a 
world  beyond,  in  which  we  ourselves  shall 
have  part,  may  be  looked  at  in  various  ways 
and  colours  itself,  according  to  our  tempera- 
ment; yet  in  any  case  it  changes  all  our 
values.  Only  the  most  superficial  resem- 
blance is  left  between  those  who  are  Chris- 
tians and  those  who  are  not.  Now  at 
last  are  men  coming  to  see  this.  They 
reaUze  that  whether  the  supernatural  theory 
of  the  origin  and  nature  of  Church  life  be 
true  or  false,  it  is  terrific,  and  that  in  this 
11 


146       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

respect  there  can  be  little  doubt  as  to  the 
belief  of  the  earliest  of  Christians  or  the 
consciousness  of  their  Master.  We  may 
indeed  have  to  allow  a  good  deal  more  for 
the  way  in  which  the  doctrine  was  developed 
out  of  its  seed,  but  of  the  supernatural, 
other-worldly  claims  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
there  can  be  no  question.  Indeed  there 
never  need  have  been,  but  for  a  small 
circle  of  pedants,  who  were  anxious  to 
retain  the  name  and  prestige  of  Christian, 
while  rejecting  every  element  that  gave  the 
Faith  its  power.  All  they  held  was  a  mere 
morality,  but  they  wanted  to  dignify  it 
with  the  name  of  religion.  They  desired 
the  historic  and  traditional  charm  of  the 
Christian  Church,  while  repudiating  every 
element  which  made  that  charm  possible. 
Now,  however,  this  school  is  breaking  up 
under  the  pressure  of  mutual  criticism,  and 
the  issue  is  daily  clearer  between  those  who 
accept  Jesus  Christ  with  His  supernatural 
claim  and  those  who,  since  they  are  unable 
to  credit  the  claim,  repudiate  His  leader- 
ship. The  half-way  house  of  German  liber- 
alism is  built  on  sands;  the  storm  of  the 
apocalyptic  problem  is  shaking  it  in  pieces. 


CALVARY  147 

To  many,  of  course,  this  recognition  makes 
belief  harder;  for  they  cannot  delude 
themselves  any  longer  into  imagining  they 
are  Christians,  when  they  are  nothing  of 
the  sort. 

Dr.  Schweitzer,  in  a  memorable  phrase, 
has  declared  that  if  Jesus  Christ  came  into 
our  modern  world.  He  would  come  as  a 
stranger;  that  our  characteristic  categories 
hold  no  place  for  Him;  that  the  funda- 
mentally other-worldly  claim,  the  apoca- 
lyptic vision  of  Jesus  is  opposed  to  the 
presuppositions  of  the  ordinary  educated 
man,  formed  as  they  are  under  the  influence 
of  naturaUsm.  I  beheve  that  Dr.  Schweitzer 
is  right;  that  if  Jesus  came  once  more  as  an 
individual  He  would  come  not  to  bring 
peace  but  a  sword,  and  that  many  who 
for  sentimental  reasons  cling  to  His  name 
would  turn  and  cry  "Crucify  Him."  I 
believe  also  that  He  is  doing  this  here  and 
now,  through  His  body  the  Church,  except 
where  she  is  false  to  her  mission;  and  that 
there  is  an  irreconcilable  conflict,  not  indeed 
between  science  and  religion,  but  between 
scientific  fatahsm  and  the  postulates  of  the 
Christian   Faith.     This   conflict   it  is   idle 


148       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

to  ignore.  It  meets  us  at  every  stage  and 
in  every  form.  Idler  yet  is  the  attempt  by 
the  promoters  of  "reduced  Christianity" 
to  transform  the  "great  mystery  of  godH- 
ness"  into  a  decorated  natural  philosophy 
or  a  sentimental  altruism.  For  the  essence 
of  the  Faith  is  to  be  spiritual,  personal, 
supernatural,  and  it  may  not  be  reconciled 
with  any  rationalistically  designed  scheme 
of  the  universe.  Yet  it  is  congruous  with 
Hfe  as  it  is  lived  daily  in  this  world;  with 
the  dreams  and  "obstinate  questions"  of 
the  child;  with  the  "long  long  thoughts" 
of  the  youth;  with  the  passion  and  adven- 
ture of  the  man,  and  with  all  the  incurably 
social  instincts  of  the  race. 

So  far  as  I  have  understood  him. 
Dr.  Schweitzer  himself  is  convinced  of  the 
adequacy  of  our  modern  categories  and 
thinks  them  a  fit  criterion  whereby  to 
judge  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  Having 
shewn  that  the  Jesus  of  the  Gospels  is  not 
the  Christ  of  modern  Protestantism,  and 
descanted  on  His  supernatural  apocalyptic 
claim,  he  turns  away,  treating  Him  as 
mere  man  with  a  turn  for  vision.  That, 
at  any  rate,  is  one  alternative  (whether  or 


CALVARY  149 

no  it  is  that  adopted  by  Dr.  Schweitzer). 
You  may  believe  that  the  apocalyptic  Jesus 
is  nearer  to  the  truth  of  history  than  any 
other,  and  on  that  very  ground  you  may 
be  unable  to  credit  His  claims,  and  are 
therefore  driven  to  decline  all  connection 
with  historical  Christianity.  George  Tyrrell 
has  shewn  how  the  apocalyptic  theory 
leads  straight  on  to  a  transcendent  view 
of  Jesus,  and  the  situation  has  been  well 
summed  up  by  a  Cambridge  scholar. 

"Once  more  we  are  driven  to  ask,  Who 
is  this  mysterious  Person  of  the  irrecon- 
cilable contrasts,  who  had  not  where  to 
lay  His  Head,  and  who  claimed  all  power 
in  Heaven  and  earth?  Who,  we  are  told, 
belonged  so  completely  to  His  own  age 
that  he  is  a  stranger  and  enigma  to  our 
time,  and  yet  men  think  of  Him,  talk  of 
Him,  worship  Him,  and  find  their  truest 
Ufe  in  following  Him?  Who  Hved  on  earth, 
they  tell  us,  the  hfe  of  a  deluded  visionary, 
finding  out  His  mistakes  on  a  felon's  cross, 
and  yet,  the  same  writer  tells  us,  *  a  mighty 
spiritual  force  streams  forth  from  Him 
and  flows  through  our  time  also'?  Who, 
as  the  same  author  goes  on  to  declare, 


150       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

*in  the  light  of  historical  inquiry  passes 
our  time  and  returns  to  His  own'?  And 
yet  the  champion  of  this  new  attempt  to 
explain  the  mystery  of  His  personality 
has  given  up  his  life  of  teaching  and  study 
at  Strasburg  to  be  trained  as  a  medical 
missionary  for  work  on  the  Congo,  and  has 
now  been  accepted  by  the  French  Mis- 
sionary Society  for  that  purpose,  and  is, 
I  believe,  soon  to  go  out,  to  fight,  as  he 
puts  it,  *for  the  lordship  and  rule  of  Jesus 
over  this  world.'  Whatever  judgment  we 
may  pass  on  Dr.  Schweitzer's  book  and 
theories,  let  us  make  up  our  minds  in  the 
hght  of  these  facts.  Once  more  he  has 
forced  upon  us,  by  what  he  has  written 
and  by  what  he  wants  to  do,  the  question 
of  the  Jerusalem  crowd.  Who  is  this.^^  We 
may  learn  part  of  the  answer  to  the  question 
from  the  closing  words  of  his  book.  'Jesus 
comes  to  us  as  One  unknown,  without  a 
name,  as  of  old  by  the  lakeside  He  came 
to  those  who  knew  Him  not;  He  speaks 
to  us  the  same  words,  "Follow  Me,"  and 
sets  us  the  tasks  which  He  has  to  fulfil  for 
our  time.  He  commands.  And  to  those 
who  obey  Him,  whether  they  be  wise  or 


CALVARY  151 

simple,  He  will  reveal  Himself  in  the  toils, 
the  conflicts,  the  sufferings  which  they  shall 
pass  through  in  His  fellowship,  and  as  an 
ineffable  mystery  they  shall  learn  in  their 
own  experience  who  He  is.' " 

A  movement  somewhat  similar  is  repre- 
sented by  men  such  as  Professor  Drews, 
and  in  a  less  degree  Professor  Jensen, 
abroad,  and  less  important  folk  in  England, 
like  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson  and  Mr.  Roberts, 
and  in  this  country  by  Professor  W.  B. 
Smith.  These  men  ^  have  all  convinced 
themselves  a  priori  of  the  impossibihty 
of  any  supernatural  events.  At  the  same 
time  they  reject  the  "Liberal"  view  that 
the  miraculous  and  transcendental  elements 
in  the  story  are  of  a  later  creation,  and 
that  the  figure  of  Jesus  as  a  pure  and  dis- 
interested social  reformer  can  be  disengaged 
from  this  supernatural  trapping  and  made 
a  mark,  if  not  for  faith,  at  least  for  admira- 
tion. Such  men  see  plainly  that  this  is 
impossible;  the  Gospel  narratives,  the 
Epistles  of  S.  Paul,  which  reflect  the 
earliest  personal  experience,  the  whole  at- 
mosphere of  the  early  Church  as  displayed 


152     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

in  the  New  Testament  and  in  our  earliest 
independent  knowledge,  are  saturated  with 
the  miraculous.  The  supernatural  is  so 
much  an  integral  part  of  the  picture  that 
it  is  vain  to  cut  out  all  these  elements  as 
unhistorical  and  treat  what  is  left,  after 
this  gigantic  subtraction,  as  the  fact.  The 
whole  of  the  narratives  must  go  by  the 
board  if  we  may  not  believe  in  the  irruption 
of  the  Divine  into  this  world  at  a  definite 
time.  Consequently  the  whole  evidence 
does  go  by  the  board.  They  are  devoting 
their  energies  with  much  ingenuity  to  shew 
that  the  whole  story  of  Jesus,  however 
attenuated,  has  no  warrant  in  fact;  that 
the  person  is  simply  the  eponymous  hero 
of  a  cult  which  has  gathered  round  the 
Eucharistic  meal.  A  mild  expression  of 
this  tendency  can  be  seen  in  the  words  of 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Cheyne. 

"That  the  God-man,  whose  cult  in  cer- 
tain Jewish  circles  was  probably  pre-Chris- 
tian was  called  by  a  name  which  underlies 
Joshua,  has  become  to  me,  on  grounds  of 
my  own,  very  possible,  and  it  is  to  me 
much  more  than  merely  possible  that  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  was  not  betrayed  or  surren- 


CALVARY  15S 

dered  to  the  Jewish  authorities,  whether 
by  Judas  or  by  anyone  else.  The  'Twelve 
Apostles'  too  are  to  me  (and  I  should 
think  to  many  critics)  as  unhistorical  as 
the  seventy  disciples."  ^ 

Such  speculations  may  seem  sufficiently 
absurd.  But  these  words  of  ex-Canon 
Cheyne  shew  that  they  are  not  to  be 
ignored  by  the  most  eminent  critics,  and 
that  the  advanced  school  of  learned  criti- 
cism has  much  affinity  with  such  views. 
It  is  very  natural.  Once  grant  the  postu- 
lates on  which  they  rest  —  and  most  of 
the  German  "Liberals"  do  grant  these 
postulates  —  and  the  conclusions  of  Drews 
are  far  less  absurd  than  the  attempt  of  the 
normal  Teutonic  savant  to  reduce  the  hfe 
of  Jesus  and  the  experience  of  the  Church 
to  the  level  of  the  ordinary  events  of  their 
own  machine-governed  lives.  All  these  peo- 
ple seem  destitute  of  one  sense;  they  are 
like  the  senior  wrangler  who  asked  what 
*  Paradise  Lost'  was  written  to  prove. 

The  problem  offered  by  the  apocalyptic 
school,  led  by  Dr.  Schweitzer,  and  by  the 
mythological  school  as  led  by  men  like 
Professor   Drews,  has  not  been  faced  by 


154       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

the  advocates  of  the  commonplace  and 
Phihstine  projection  of  the  Gospel  figure 
fashionable  in  circles  of  soi-disant  enlight- 
enment and  set  forth  in  unadorned  sterility 
by  the  Dean  of  Divinity  at  Magdalen 
College,  Oxford.  The  point  is  not  whether 
such  views  are  true  —  they  are  obviously 
nonsense  —  but  whether  they  are  not  the 
logical  outcome  of  these  same  preposses- 
sions, which  cause  the  excision  of  all 
the  wonderful  features  from  the  figure 
of  Christ  and  the  history  of  the  Church. 
*' Reduced  Christianity,"  as  it  is  called, 
is  but  a  half-way  house.  You  cannot  rest 
in  it,  but  must  move  either  backward  or 
forward.  Either  you  must  surrender  any- 
thing beyond  the  merest  humanitarian 
notion  of  our  Lord;  in  which  case  you  will 
not  improbably  be  driven  further  and 
eventually,  like  the  protagonist  in  the 
"Jesus  as  Christ"  controversy,  give  up  all 
belief  even  in  His  historicity;  or  at  any 
rate  you  will  find  it  more  and  more  impos- 
sible to  maintain  any  real  belief  in  His 
uniqueness. 

Dr.  Harnack,  for  instance,  is  for  cutting 
away  most  of  the  transcendent  elements, 


CALVARY  155 

while  still  maintaining  His  unique  relation 
to  the  Father  —  a  doctrine  which  really 
surrenders  the  notion  of  history  as  a  mere 
continuing  and  makes  miracles  possible. 
It  admits  a  "creative  evolution."  It  is 
doubtful  whether  this  view  can  be  sustained. 
The  whole  movement  of  the  Christian 
Church  may  be  a  delusion,  and  then  we 
are  all  in  the  dark,  except  that  the  dark- 
ness has  been  made  visible  by  the  pathetic 
splendour  of  Christianity.  For,  as  men 
are  coming  to  see,  the  Liberal  Protestant 
view  of  our  Lord  really  is  a  justification 
of  the  Jewish  people,  who  crucified  Him 
for  His  claims;  and  it  is  to  that  Judaistic 
theism  that  those  must  return  who  are 
so  deeply  wedded  to  the  modern  super- 
stitions of  law  and  continuity  that  the 
exceptional,  the  unique,  the  really  new 
event  or  person  is  to  them  inconceivable. 
If  on  the  other  hand  you  accept  the  lordship 
of  Jesus  as  a  mysterious  being,  with  some- 
thing in  Him  more  than  human,  you  will 
be  carried,  however  reluctantly,  to  the 
Christ  of  the  Creeds  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment and  the  whole  supernatural  faith  in 
a  Church  dispensing  gifts  of  God's  grace 


156       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

and  guided  by  a  power  not  of  this  world. 
This  also  you  will  do,  unless  you  are  so 
deeply  convinced  of  what  can  not  happen 
that  you  remain  unmoved  by  the  accumu- 
lated weight  of  evidence,  historic,  social, 
personal,  which  points  to  a  transcendental 
interpretation  of  these  strange  facts  in  the 
world's  experience. 

What  I  want  to  emphasize  is,  that 
here  is  the  dividing  Une,  and  we  must 
make  our  choice.  Christianity  may  be  true 
or  false,  but  it  makes  claims  subversive  of 
all  the  rationalist  projections  of  life.  It 
rests  on  presuppositions  which  cannot  by 
any  ingenuity  be  reconciled  with  any  view 
which  denies  the  miraculous,  the  unique, 
the  individual.  Its  whole  meaning  comes 
from  a  faith  in  a  life  of  spirits  behind  the 
veil.  It  cannot  without  hopeless  error  be 
confused  with  those  systems  which  deny 
such  a  life  or  treat  it  as  impersonal.  You 
cannot  treat  existence  as  a  closed  circle, 
with  every  part  predetermined,  and  at  the 
same  time  assert  the  reality  of  freedom  and 
the  guilt  of  sin.  You  cannot  place  the  same 
value,  as  others  do,  upon  human  life  on 
earth,  if  you  hold  that  life  to  be  but  an 


CALVARY  157 

episode  in  a  career  which  passes  far  beyond 
earth.  This  world  is  a  different  place 
according  as  it  be  viewed  from  the  Christian 
or  the  non-Christian  standpoint,  and  no 
ethical  or  personal  sympathy  can  bridge 
the  gulf. 

A  very  cursory  perusal  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment ought  soon  to  convince  even  the  most 
pronounced  Liberal  that,  even  allowing 
for  differences  of  date  and  expression,  the 
experience  therein  recorded  is  something 
other  than  that  contemplated  by  their 
system.  It  is  above  all  things  of  a  "new 
life,"  a  vast  change,  that  the  writers  speak, 
and  it  always  has  reference  to  the  world 
beyond.  Take  the  most  characteristic 
phrases  of  S.  Paul,  such  as  that  of  being 
"buried  with  Christ  in  baptism";  that 
"Christians  are  dead  and  their  life  hid 
with  Christ  in  God";  that  he  is  "crucified 
with  Christ,  nevertheless  I  live,  yet  not  I 
but  Christ  Uveth  in  me."  These  might 
conceivably  be  paralleled  in  non-Christian 
mystical  writings,  but  that  of  itself  points 
to  the  other  world  and  is  far  removed  from 
the  drab  Philistinism  of  the  Liberal.  Its 
very  meaning    is    the   unity  between  the 


158     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

individual  and  the  all;   the  flight  of  "the 
alone  to  the  alone." 

Or  take  the  phrases  about  the  peace  pur- 
chased with  the  blood  of  Christ.  They 
are  quite  as  startling,  or  even  vulgar  some 
might  say,  as  hymns  like  Cowper's  "There 
is  a  fountain  filled  with  blood."  The  cry 
of  an  untaught  Methodist,  the  "blood  and 
fire  "  of  the  Salvation  Army,  the  best  Eng- 
lish form  of  devotion  to  the  Sacred  Heart, 
are  one  and  all  nearer  to  the  mind  of  the 
New  Testament  writers,  to  S.  Paul,  and  S. 
Peter,  and  S.  John,  and  above  all  to  the 
Epistles  to  the  Hebrews,  than  are  the 
ethical  commonplaces  of  Unitarian  or  semi- 
Unitarian  Christianity.  I  suppose  this  ele- 
ment of  strangeness  and  unorthodoxy  would 
be  admitted  in  the  writings  attributed  to 
S.  John,  but  discounted.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  it  is  of  little  importance  for  our  purpose 
here  who  wrote  them.  They  certainly 
represent  a  state  of  mind  that  existed  in  the 
Church  quite  early.  Of  that  transcen- 
dental, other-worldly  conception  of  Jesus 
as  existing  in  the  Church  they  are  first- 
hand evidence,  no  less  than  the  Epistles 
to  the  Ephesians  or  the  Colossians.     Turn 


CALVARY  159 

the  New  Testament  inside  out,  dissect  it 
as  you  may,  and  you  cannot  read  it  for 
ten  minutes  without  coming  across  flashes 
of  this  sort  side  by  side  often  with  the  most 
matter-of-fact  maxims  for  the  conduct  of 
parents  and  children,  wives  and  slaves  and 
citizens.  One  unique  feature  of  the  New 
Testament  is  the  interpenetration  of  the 
plainest  moral  precepts  with  the  most 
exalted  mystical  ecstasy. 

Finally  is  there  not  in  the  central  figure 
itself,  despite  all  this  simphcity,  something 
strange  and  elusive.'^  There  is,  it  might 
almost  be  said,  a  certain  absent-minded- 
ness in  the  utterances  of  Jesus;  and  while 
He  lives  the  hfe  of  a  Jew,  the  words  which 
at  one  time  caused  many  so  much  ponder- 
ing would  seem  expressive  of  His  habitual 
way.  It  is  not  a  character  easy  to  be 
described,  and  His  life  in  the  wider  sense 
could  not  be  written.  Impressionist  por- 
traiture was  all  that  was  possible,  and 
that  is  what  we  have.  It  is  incomplete, 
unchronological,  unscientific,  if  you  will; 
but  the  impression  is  always  the  same, 
the  weird  mingling  of  the  homely  and 
the  far-off,  the  strange  romantic  tender- 


160       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

ness  for  things  human  and  little,  the 
passion  of  faith;  and  the  unbroken  calm  all 
intertwined  with  that  power  to  do  things, 
to  make  wonders,  leaves  us,  as  it  left  his 
earliest  friends,  in  suspense.  "What  man- 
ner of  man  is  this?"  Stranger,  as  Dr. 
Schweitzer  calls  him,  to  our  age,  He  was 
strange  to  His  own,  so  strange  that  men 
were  driven  either  to  crucify  Him  or  else 
to  take  up  the  Cross  themselves. 

I  trust  that  these  instances  do  not  weary 
you.  For  further  confirmation  I  would  refer 
to  the  New  Testament.  I  am  convinced 
that  it  is  only  because  people  insist  on  dis- 
cussing religion,  who  are  ignorant  of  the 
Bible,  that  it  is  ever  thought  feasible  to 
present  Christianity  as  a  merely  human 
religion,  while  still  maintaining  it  to  be 
Christianity.  People  will  read  philosophy, 
theology,  criticism,  anything  rather  than  the 
Bible,  and  then  they  wonder  why  the  system 
of  the  Church  is  so  unintelligible.  I  confess 
it  myself.  It  is  only  these  last  few  years 
that  I  have,  as  it  were,  rediscovered  the 
New  Testament;  and  the  more  I  study  it, 
not  critically  but  devotionally,  the  more 
does  the  choice  it  leaves  seem  clear  to  me. 
Either  this  thing  is  a  delusion  the  most 


CALVARY  161 

gigantic  the  world  has  known,  or  else  it  is 
a  revelation  from  beyond,  a  gift  of  grace, 
something  that  we  could  not  have  done  for 
ourselves.  Either  it  is  what  it  claims,  the 
power  of  God  able  to  save  to  the  utter- 
most and  giving  peace  and  freedom,  or 
it  is  a  quack  medicine;  this  conclusion  is 
vouched  for  ahke  by  its  earliest  records, 
by  the  history  of  the  Church,  and  by  the 
experience  of  the  individual  Christian  to- 
day, from  Papist  to  Plymouth  brother.  All 
believe  themselves  to  have  hold  of  a  new 
supernatural  life,  to  be  sustained  by  forces 
not  their  own,  to  be  in  touch  with  One, 
of  Whom  however  little  we  know,  we  know 
enough  to  enter  into  communion  with  Him ; 
and  that  He  can  give  us  of  Himself.  This 
He  has  done  by  the  medium  of  His  Son, 
the  very  brightness  of  His  glory,  and  that 
Son  not  only  shews  us  the  Father,  but 
in  some  way  beyond  our  ken  has  bought 
for  us  deliverance  from  death  by  His 
great  act  on  the  Cross;  so  that  who- 
soever beheveth  in  Him  shall  not  perish, 
but  have  Eternal  Life.  In  other  words, 
Christianity  is  supernatural,  or  it  is  a 
sham. 


162       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

But  what  do  you  mean  by  the  super- 
natural? And  what  right  have  you  to 
use  the  term?  These  are  questions  cer- 
tain to  be  put.  It  has  recently  become 
the  fashion  to  deprecate  the  use  of  the 
term  supernatural;  to  declare  that  the 
spiritual  significance  of  nature  is  so  real, 
and  the  consecration  of  our  ordinary  life  so 
needful,  that  to  use  this  term  arouses 
needless  hostility  and  leads  to  a  low  view 
of  human  duty.  Carlyle  used  to  declare, 
"The  natural  is  the  supernatural."  Do 
not  all  Christian^  hold  to  the  Omnipresence 
of  God?  That  means  His  Immanence  in 
all  His  works,  and  so  far  from  honouring 
God,  we  are  profaning  Him  by  shutting 
Him  off  into  one  separate  part  called  super- 
natural. I  think  that  this  objection  is 
groundless,  and  that  the  disuse  of  the  term 
leads  to  grave  dangers  in  the  direction  of 
Pantheism,  dangers  which  we  have  not 
altogether  escaped.  It  is  partly,  of  course, 
a  matter  of  definition.  If,  as  Huxley  said 
somewhere,  nature  is  taken  for  simply  the 
universe  of  being,  it  is  quite  clear  that  the 
natural  is  the  supernatural;  it  is  indeed  a 
truism.     Nobody  asserts  that  miracles  are 


CALVARY  163 

against  the  nature  of  things;  if  by  nature 
we  mean  all  that  happens,  as  Mill  put  it, 
of  course  they  are  natural  events.  Only 
as  a  fact  people  do  not  mean  that  when 
they  speak  of  nature.  They  mean  this 
physical  visible  world.  The  question  is  not 
whether  this  world  has  a  spiritual  significance, 
but  whether  it  is  all  or  only  a  part  of  the  whole. 
The  least  misleading  way  of  asserting  that 
there  is,  in  addition  to  this  world,  a  larger 
invisible  world  behind  it,  with  other  powers 
than  we  possess,  is,  to  my  judgment,  to 
make  use  of  this  derided  term  supernatural. 
But  of  course  it  must  be  remembered  that, 
taking  the  universe  as  a  whole,  events  such 
as  the  birth  of  Christ  are  natural,  miracles 
are  normal,  all  is  according  to  order;  but 
it  is  the  nature,  the  law,  and  the  order  of 
the  whole,  and  of  that  whole  we  have  here 
but  a  tiny  part. 

On  this  point  and  on  some  others  touched 
on  in  this  book,  the  reader  will  do  well  to 
consult  an  admirable  article  by  Miss  Carta 
Sturge  in  The  Commonwealth  for  September, 
1909.  It  is  in  the  form  of  a  review  of  Mr. 
Dearmer's  book  on  Body  and  Soul,  but  it 
deals  with  topics  of  wider  interest.     I  wish 


164     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

that  it  could  be  reprinted.    Failing  that, 
I  quote  the  following. 

"Nevertheless,  perhaps,  in  his  recogni- 
tion of  the  essential  Unity  of  Matter  and 
Mind,  it  is  possible  that  the  author  some- 
what loses  sight  of  the  difference  of  planes 
in  which  the  Creator  manifests  Himself 
when  he  comes  to  the  question  of  miracles. 
He  speaks,  and  in  a  sense  rightly,  of  the 
'naturalness  of  miracles.'  If  'naturalness' 
is  held  to  be  equivalent  to  processes  carried 
on  in  obedience  to  law,  laws  whether 
spiritual,  psychic,  or  physical,  then  the 
expression  is  true.  But  as  a  matter  of 
fact  we  generally  understand  by  natural 
the  workings  of  the  laws  of  the  physical 
plane,  which  we  call  the  world  of  Nature, 
and  which  works  according  to  laws  of  its 
own,  laws  which  we  are  learning  to  know 
with  great  exactitude  and  on  which  we  can 
calculate  with  increasing  certainty  so  long 
as  (there  is  the  point)  they  are  not  inter- 
fered with  or  counteracted  by  the  higher 
laws  of  another  plane.  But  surely  it  is 
the  bringing  into  play  of  another  order  of 
laws  so  to  speak,  laws  which  usually  have 
little  touch  with  this  plane,  which  constitutes 


CALVARY  165 

miracle.  If  miracles  were  natural  in  the 
sense  which  we  ordinarily  understand  by 
the  word,  we  should  not  have  witnessed  the 
almost  passionate  effort  on  the  part  of 
scientific  men  in  the  generation  just  passed 
to  get  rid  of  them  as  things  contrary  to 
nature  and  impossible.  There  must  be 
some  very  marked  distinction  between  the 
*  works'  and  'powers'  spoken  of  as  miracles 
(amounting  almost  to  a  difference  in  kind) 
and  the  ordinary  facts  of  nature  or  they 
would  not  have  produced  such  intense 
increduUty  in  scientific  students  of  nature. 
And  in  so  far  as  they  are  not  according  to 
the  so-called  laws  of  nature,  even  markedly 
upsetting  these,  they  can  truly  be  spoken  of 
as  supernatural,  coming  from  a  plane  lying 
deeper  than  our  known  world  of  natural 
phenomena.  And  we  shall  have  greatly 
to  alter  the  connotation  of  'natural'  if  we 
are  to  make  it  cover  these  laws  of  a  more 
mental  or  spiritual  plane.  It  is  true  that 
there  is  evidence  that  these  higher  laws  are 
Ukely  in  the  future  to  play  a  far  more 
important  part  in  our  life  on  this  plane, 
and  that  by  familiarity  with  them  they  may 
cease  to  seem  marvellous;  yet  there  still 


166     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

will  be  the  two  distinct  sets  of  laws,  distinct 
from  each  other,  the  physical  and  the 
superphysical,  although  related  of  course 
in  a  Unity  as  all  emanating  from  the 
Creator.  ...  It  is  best  to  avoid  confusion 
and  to  recognise  that  we  are  so  constituted 
as  to  have,  if  we  will  live  up  to  our  inheri- 
tance, more  or  less,  the  command  of  the 
laws  of  at  least  two  planes  and  possibly 
more."* 

Again,  under  the  influence  of  idealism, 
the  natural  has  been  alleged  to  be  the  super- 
natural, in  as  much  as  its  whole  meaning, 
its  bulk,  is  spiritual.  Such  a  view  no  Chris- 
tian is  concerned  to  deny;  God  is  the 
ground  of  the  material  universe  and  its 
laws  are  His  will.  Yet  again  it  seems  to 
me  in  its  practical  import  misleading  and 
dangerous.  For  it  almost  irresistibly  tends 
to  identify  God  with  the  world  and  to  lead 
right  on  to  Pantheism.  At  least  it  favours 
the  view  that  God  is  not  above,  but  im- 
plicated in  the  course  of  nature;  that  He 
cannot  break  the  routine  of  a  natural  evo- 
lution, operating  in  fixed  ways  known  to 
science. 

Nature  from  this  standpoint  always  tends 


CALVARY  167 

to  mean  "nature  as  she  appears  to  man 
from  a  certain  point  of  view  —  i.e.,  from 
the  standpoint  of  mechanical  causation"; 
if  this  is  not  asserted  it  is  always  implied.^ 
It  leads  further  to  the  view  that  the  whole 
universe  is  one  in  such  a  way  that,  though 
that  oneness  be  spiritual,  in  it  there  can 
be  no  true  individuahty,  no  freedom,  and 
nothing  like  the  Gospel  drama  of  the  soul. 
These  things  have  a  certain  relative  value, 
but  they  cannot  be  the  saving  Truth  men 
used  to  think  them.  I  do  not  say  that 
all  who  object  to  the  term  supernatural 
hold  this.  But  I  think  that  the  logical 
implication  of  their  thought  is  in  this  direc- 
tion, and  that  many  find  therein  the  main 
stumbHng  block  to  Faith.  It  is  against 
such  views  that  supernatural  is  in  its  right 
place,  as  the  epithet  distinctive  of  Chris- 
tianity. No  Christian  need  deny  the 
spiritual  significance  of  matter  or  assert 
that  the  physical  world  is  to  be  explained 
apart  from  God.  Rather  he  asserts  the 
contrary.  But  he  must  assert  that  God  is 
very  much  more  than  the  soul  of  the  world; 
it  is  His  work,  not  merely  His  garment. 
He  is  as  much  and  more  beyond  it  as  I, 


168     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

in  my  personality,  am  beyond  the  body 
which  is  the  instrument  of  my  life  here. 
It  is  sometimes  said  that  this  distinction 
between  nature  and  the  supernatural  is 
harmful  because  it  secularises  the  greater 
part  of  hfe.  But,  as  a  fact,  to  give  up  the 
distinction  tends  in  the  long  run  to  secu- 
larise the  whole  of  it.  By  saying  that  no 
day  is  specially  sacred,  you  will  not  make 
the  ordinary  man  keep  all  days  as  the 
Lord's;  rather  he  will  more  and  more  shut 
God  out  of  his  Ufe.  Prayer  is  possible  at 
any  time  and  at  all  occupations,  but  the 
man  who  prays  when  he  is  cleaning  his 
boots  is  always  likely  to  be  the  man  who 
has  set  apart  times  to  keep  up  the  habit. 
It  is  so  through  all  this  range  of  distinctions, 
those  between  sacred  and  secular,  Sunday 
and  weekday,  clergy  and  laity,  the  Church 
and  the  world,  venial  and  mortal  sins.  All 
of  them  are  relative,  not  absolute.  To 
press  any  to  an  extreme  is  dangerous.  But 
to  leave  them  out  is  more  dangerous  still. 
Human  nature  being  what  it  is,  you  tend 
to  banish  God  altogether  if  you  say  that 
because  He  is  omnipresent  there  are  to 
be  no  sacred  places  or  seasons.    While  if 


CALVARY  169 

you  assert  that  all  sins  are  equal,  though 
in  one  sense  it  is  true,  you  will  make  the 
ordinary  man  treat  all  sin  as  venial  and 
none  as  serious.  A  great  deal  of  the 
current  laxity  in  regard  to  sin  has  come  from 
the  omission  to  make  use  of  a  distinction 
between  mortal  and  venial  sin,  which  is 
only  approximately  true.  We  have  fallen 
in  consequence  into  the  worse  error  of 
treating  sin  as  unimportant. 

The  supreme  danger,  however,  of  this 
dislike  of  the  idea  of  the  supernatural  is 
that  in  so  far  as  it  is  not  hostile  to  religion 
it  ministers  to  a  fashionable  Pantheism, 
which  in  the  long  run  condones  the  most 
revolting  acts,  because  somehow  or  other 
they  are  part  of  God's  world.  In  the  past 
generation  men  have  given  in  a  little  too 
much  to  this  habit  of  thought.  We  have 
passed  through  an  age  best  termed  Alex- 
andrian, when  men  have  been  concerned  to 
shew  the  assimilations  between  Christian 
and  other  systems  and  have  almost  forgot- 
ten the  difference  in  the  process.  So  much 
alive  have  they  been  to  the  human  environ- 
ment that  they  have  neglected  to  emphasize 
the  divine  origin  of  the  Gospel.    Now,  it 


170     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

seems,  we  need  rather  a  Tertullianist  or 
Augustinian  presentment  of  the  faith  insist- 
ing more  on  its  difference  from,  than  its 
approximation  to,  other  systems;  on  the 
vital  change  it  brought,  rather  than  on  the 
connection,  however  undoubted,  with  the 
old;  on  the  gift  of  a  new  life,  that  makes  it 
what  it  is.  Both  sides  are  true;  what 
might  be  roughly  called  the  Greek,  or  the 
Johannine  view  of  things,  and  the  Latin  or 
the  Pauline;  at  this  moment  it  is  the  latter 
that  we  need  to  bring  into  relief. 

As  I  have  tried  to  shew,  it  is  these  unique, 
incommunicable,  other-worldly  elements 
that  make  the  beauty  of  the  Christian 
Faith,  even  though  it  be  false.  These  it  is 
which  give  it  its  own  aroma.  To  cut  out 
of  it  all  miracle  because  it  is  improbable, 
the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  because  it 
is  mysterious,  the  glory  of  sins  forgiven 
because  it  is  hard  to  rationalise,  all  this 
would  be  to  cut  out  what  is  of  real  charm 
in  the  Christian,  as  distinct  from  other 
systems;  while  it  seems  to  me  that  those 
who  are  for  this  drastic  treatment  are 
attaching  a  certainty  and  infallibiHty  to 
some  modern  habits  of  thought  which  they 


CALVARY  171 

do  not  possess  even  in  regard  to  normal 
human  life,  and  are  still  less  likely  to  pos- 
sess in  regard  to  any  revelation  from  unseen 
powers.  The  assumption  at  the  basis  of 
George  Tyrrell's  Christianity  at  the  Cross 
Roads  seems  to  be  that  wherever  Christi- 
anity conflicts  with  our  modern  mental 
scheme,  it  must  be  trimmed  to  make  the 
two  square.  This  view  seems  to  be  quite 
without  ground.  Neither  facts  nor  theory 
justify  our  holding  the  dogma  of  the  infalli- 
bility of  the  modern  Western  mind.  Its 
most  acute  representatives  do  not  claim 
this  infallibility,  and  the  intellectual  an- 
archy of  our  day  reveals  its  inadequacy. 
Most  of  all,  however,  is  its  limitation 
displayed  in  the  amazing  lack  of  certain 
elements  of  noble  hving,  which  are  found 
in  civihsations  whose  spirit  is  different. 
It  lays  stress  on  one  set  of  qualities  and 
ignores  others,  and  the  result  is  mon- 
strosity. It  is  precisely  because  the  Chris- 
tian Faith  does  involve  these  other  elements, 
because  it  demands  a  mental  habit  different 
from  that  now  popular,  that  it  is  at  least 
arresting.  True  or  false,  its  sincere  pro- 
fession sets  us  free  from  the  idols  of  our 


172     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

modern  cave  and  permits  us  to  look  at 
God's  universe  with  the  eyes  of  the  peni- 
tent, the  lover,  and  the  child.  To  take 
from  the  Christian  Faith  the  elements  that 
make  this  possible  is  to  destroy  its  inahen- 
able  charm  and  remove  from  it  its  main 
source  of  attraction,  as  compared  with 
other  schemes  austere,  imposing,  and  phil- 
osophical though  they  be. 

I  think  then  that  we  do  right  in  empha- 
sizing the  uniqueness  of  the  Christian  claim 
and  insisting  on  the  wisdom  of  the  use  of 
the  word  supernatural.  But  it  is  also  true 
that  there  is  a  very  important  sense,  in 
which  the  natural  is  the  supernatural,  and 
that  our  whole  problem  turns  on  this  truth. 
The  real  question  between  Christianity  and 
its  adversaries  is  concerned  not  with  the 
N  miracles  of  Jesus,  but  with  the  possibiUty 
of  human  freedom.  The  antecedent  diffi- 
culty which  keeps  men  from  Christian 
Faith  is  commonly  understood  to  be  this 
problem  of  the  miraculous.  This  is  true, 
but  it  is  true  only  because  miracles  are  a 
part  of  the  larger  issue  between  freedom 
and  necessity.    All  along  the  Une  there  is 


CALVARY  173 

one  and  only  one  fundamental  difficulty, 
that  created  by  "scientific  fatalism."  It  is 
clear  that  without  some  doctrine  of  human 
freedom  the  Christian  scheme  and  the 
whole  theory  of  sin  and  redemption  is 
nonsense.  What  is  less  obvious  is  that 
once  it  be  established  that  the  acts  of  men 
are  not  all  of  them  determined,  the  a  priori 
argument  against  miracles  is  gone.  Suppos- 
ing our  wills  be  free,  we  are  spirits  who 
choose  and,  acting  frequently  upon  the 
material  of  nature,  alter  and  interfere  with 
its  arrangements.  We  make  that  happen 
which  apart  from  our  free  act  would  not 
happen.  A  miracle  only  asserts  the  same 
about  a  being  or  beings  also  free  and  with 
under  knowledge  than  ours.  When  God 
employs  the  forces  of  nature  without  any 
apparent  interference,  we  call  His  act  a 
special  providence;  when  He  brings  forces 
into  play  which  we  cannot  manipulate,  we 
call  the  act  a  miracle.  Both  are  equally 
involved  in  the  conception  of  God's  free- 
dom, that  is  His  personality.  Both  are 
equally  opposed  to  the  mechanical  theory 
of  the  world  and  are  apt  to  be  laughed  out 
of  court.    If  there  be  a  spirit  world  besides 


174     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

man  at  all,  we  can  hardly  suppose  that  the 
beings  within  it  are  not  possessed  of  wider 
knowledge  than  ours,  and  they  will  produce 
effects  more  startHng.  The  whole  problem 
turns  on  the  reahty  of  freedom,  for  that 
involves  even  in  ourselves  powers  which 
may  well  be  called  supernatural.  It  is 
of  course  conceivable  that  there  are  no 
higher  beings  in  the  universe  than  we  are. 
If  that  were  so,  of  course  miracles  in  the 
ordinary  sense  could  not  happen.  But 
once  grant  that  God  is  to  be  thought  of  as 
the  free  Being  who  created  and  controlled 
the  world,  then  it  is  really  less  difficult  to 
credit  His  action  than  our  own;  for  we 
know  very  well  that  our  life  is  dependent. 
Once  grant,  however,  that  our  acts  are  free, 
or  some  of  them,  and  the  whole  edifice  of 
a  system  of  rigid  mechanism  falls  to  the 
ground;  and  we  must,  at  least,  allow  the  pos- 
sibility of  such  irruptions  from  the  world 
beyond  sight  as  are  best  called  miraculous. 
On  this  matter  of  freedom  it  is  needless 
to  dwell  at  length.  The  problem  is  as  old 
as  thought.  Moreover,  one  of  the  clearest 
defences  of  human  freedom  has  been  made, 
in  this  place,  by  WiUiam  James.  ^ 


CALVARY  175 

This  much,  however,  I  would  say.  Free- 
dom, not  of  all  but  of  some  actions,  is  to 
me  an  immediate  doctrine  of  consciousness, 
a  primary  fact,  the  most  real  thing  in  life. 
So  much  is  it  a  part  of  my  life  that  to  deny 
this  fact  reduces  it  to  ruins.  As  Dr. 
Pringle-Pattison  says,  "InexpKcable  in  a 
sense  as  man's  personal  agency  is  —  the 
one  perpetual  miracle  —  it  is  neverthe- 
less our  overt  datum  and  our  only  clue  to 
the  mystery  of  existence."  ^  I  find  further 
that  in  practice  this  belief  is  the  foundation 
of  social  life,  is  assumed  in  every  personal 
judgment;  and  however  they  may  explain 
it  in  theory,  all  men  make  it  in  practice 
the  presupposition  of  their  mutual  inter- 
course. So  far  then  as  I  am  concerned, 
if  I  had  to  choose,  I  would  prefer  the  belief 
that  there  is  something  radically  inadequate 
in  human  reasoning  if,  as  apparently  it 
does,  it  leads  to  determinism;  I  should  prefer 
this  alternative  to  the  acceptance  of  deter- 
minism. For  there  may  be  this  error. 
It  is  a  pure  act  of  faith  that  you  can  get  a 
rationalistically  arranged  scheme  of  things. 
The  facts  of  life  are  there,  whether  we  can 
harmonise  them  by  reason  or  any  other 


176     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

faculty.  We  do  direct  and  restrain  our 
actions.  That  we  know,  if  we  know  any- 
thing. And  to  substitute  any  intellec- 
tualist  scheme,  however  apparently  secure, 
for  what  is  to  me  the  prius  of  all  thinking, 
the  knowledge  of  freedom,  seems  to  me  to 
put  the  cart  before  the  horse  and  to  be 
denying  facts  in  deference  to  a  constructive 
theory  which  may  be  false.  Probably, 
indeed,  as  Bergson  says,  this  notion  of 
freedom  is  absolute  and  cannot  be  analyzed. 
The  moment  you  begin  to  argue  about  it, 
you  have  really  conceded  the  point  to  your 
adversary.  Freedom  must  be  accepted  as 
a  given  fact,  mysterious  like  the  primary 
facts  of  life.  In  all  there  is  something 
unfathomable,  an  "irreducible  surd."  Yet 
so  far  as  observation  goes,  it  is  true  to  say 
that  we  hve  in  a  world  of  free  beings 
standing  "free  and  doubtful  as  at  the  cross 
roads  in  a  forest."  So  far  from  the  future 
being  predictable,  the  daily  and  hourly 
experience  of  every  man,  woman,  and  child 
alive  is  expressed  in  the  maxim  of  William 
the  Waiter,  "You  never  can  tell.  Sir,  you 
never  can  tell."  Part  of  life  may  obviously 
be  made   subject   to   calculation,   and   of 


CALVARY  177 

another  part  you  can  say  what  will  probably 
occur,  and  in  much  more  you  can  state 
that  one  of  two  things  is  more  than  probable. 
More  than  that  you  cannot  do.  And  every 
attempt  to  do  more  breaks  down  in  face  of 
the  amazing  uncertainty  of  life. 

Once  let  the  fact  of  freedom  be  granted, 
and  it  may  be  said  that  we  live,  here  and 
now,  a  life  which  is  truly  described  as 
supernatural.  For  in  that  case  we  our- 
selves are  something  more  than  parts  of 
nature.  Moreover,  if  as  a  fact  there  are 
a  number  of  different  centres  of  indeter- 
mination,  the  whole  intellectualist  scheme 
of  the  universe  has  broken  down,  because 
it  is  only  the  projection  into  mental  terms 
of  notions  of  mechanical  necessity.  Reality 
is  now  seen  to  be  of  such  a  nature  that  you 
cannot  do  more  than  predict  what  will 
happen  in  the  physical  world,  provided 
certain  disturbing  causes,  such  as  the  free 
will  of  spiritual  beings,  do  not  operate; 
while  the  element  of  possible  changes  is 
much  greater  if  you  postulate  a  God  who 
is  free;  i.e.,  personal  and  all-knowing. 
The  real  battle  then  in  regard  to  miracles 
is  that  which  ranges  round  the  personaHty 

13 


\ 


178       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

of  man  and  of  God.  Both  hang  together. 
\^  Personalism  —  the  doctrine  of  the  universe 
as  a  world  of  spirits  —  is  the  point  at  issue 
in  all  the  discussions.  Pantheism  is  a 
creed  the  very  opposite  of  this;  it  begins 
by  denying  human  personaUty,  it  ends  by 
denying  Divine.  More  and  more  is  it  be- 
come clear  that  the  battle  of  the  future  is 
one  between  some  form  or  other  of  cosmic 
emotion  which  sacrifices  all  real  distinctions 
in  the  desire  to  attain  an  all-embracing 
unity  and  Christianity  with  its  insistence 
on  the  reahty  of  the  individual  life  of  men 
and  the  personal  being  of  God.  Behef  in 
Christ  is  increasingly  recognised  by  our 
opponents  as  the  great  obstacle  to  the 
prevalence  of  Pantheistic  monism.  The 
reason  is  that  the  life  of  Jesus  is  the  supreme 
revelation  of  the  personal  love  of  God,  while 
His  death  and  rising  again  are  the  assurance 
to  all  men  of  their  value  in  God's  sight 
and  their  participation  not  as  means  only, 
but  as  ends  in  the  hfe  of  the  world. 


LECTURE   IV 

SIGN   OR   THE   CHRISTIAN   FACT 

Last  summer,  if  you  met  a  casual  acquaint- 
ance come  home  from  his  holidays,  what 
was  the  scene  he  was  most  likely  to  have 
visited?  One  of  those  macadamized  cities, 
the  flower  of  our  civilisation?  I  think  not. 
Perhaps  he  sought  communion  with  nature 
in  quiet  places  and  refreshed  his  mind  by 
rustic  pursuits;  or  perhaps  he  climbed 
peaks  or  emulated  the  toils  of  Ulysses. 
One  tribute,  however,  was  paid  by  most  of 
those  who  had  the  means.  Away  from 
the  roar  of  wheels  and  heedless  of  our 
pleasures,  there  Ues  an  obscure  village  in  a 
backward  country  off  the  highway  of  the 
tourist.  To  Ober-Ammergau  came  men 
and  women  of  every  faith,  there  to  watch 
in  awe  the  drama  of  the  Cross  or  weep  at 
the  parting  of  Mary  and  her  Son.  Unlured 
by  luxuries  they  went  on  this  quest,  and 

179 


180       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

no  star  singer  or  artist  attracted  them.  It 
was  just  a  few  villagers  trained  from  youth 
up  to  this  great  act,  but  not  otherwise 
differing  from  Bavarian  peasants. 

What  is  the  ground  of  this  interest.'^  It 
does  not  indeed  prove  so  much  as  a  pil- 
grimage to  Our  Lady  of  Walsingham  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  or  that  made  memorable 
by  Chaucer  to  the  shrine  of  the  poor  man's 
Archbishop  who  dared  to  withstand  a 
monarch  more  powerful  than  the  Kaiser. 
For  modern  science  has  made  the  rough 
places  plain  to  the  traveller,  while  the  act 
which  formerly  was  one  of  devotion  is  now 
largely  due  to  curiosity.  For  all  that,  this 
interest  is  worthy  of  remark  in  an  age  when, 
according  to  Thomas  Hardy,  a  settled 
melancholy  is  coming  over  the  educated 
classes  with  the  decline  of  the  belief  in  a 
beneficent  power,  and  when  by  universal 
agreement  ideals  essentially  Pagan  have 
hold  of  numbers  of  educated  people.  How 
is  it  that  the  story  of  the  Passion  holds 
still  so  conquering  a  charm.''  You  would 
not  have  secured  a  tithe  of  that  company 
for  the  pictured  presentment  of  the  death 
of  any  other  religious  teacher  —  not  even 


SION  181 

Mrs.  Baker  Eddy.  It  is  strange  what  an 
attraction  the  Christian  Church  still  pos- 
sesses even  for  men  who  scorn  her  claims. 
Privately  people  may  reject  and  attack  these 
claims  and  in  public  laugh  to  scorn  all 
Christian  ideals,  yet  the  moment  they 
move  one  step  in  the  pursuit  of  romance, 
they  are  forced  to  acknowledge  and  even 
to  learn  from  her.  It  is  curious  to  see  in  the 
houses  of  people  to  whom  the  Catholic 
Church  is  anathema  copies  of  altar  pieces 
and  madonnas.  Even  more  amazing  it  is 
to  watch  the  struggles  of  non-Christian 
artists  and  poets  to  get  away  from  this 
atmosphere.  But  the  moment  they  drop 
into  romance,  it  comes  back  to  them. 
Agnostics  will  fill  their  holidays  with  visits 
to  S.  Ambrogio  or  S.  Mark's  and  wax  learned 
over  the  date  or  constitution  of  some 
monastic  house,  while  they  would  cut  off 
their  right  hand  rather  than  give  credence 
to  those  things  which  alone  made  such 
places  possible.  Human  culture,  so  far  as 
it  looks  before  and  after  and  seeks  to  bring 
men  into  the  society  of  "the  best  that  is 
known  and  thought  in  the  world,"  is  inex- 
tricably   entangled    with     the     Christian 


182       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

tradition.  In  consequence  you  now  find 
intransigeants  like  John  Davidson,  the 
poet,  opposed  to  all  culture,  as  the  only 
means  of  finally  cutting  off  the  entail  of 
religion.  Others  make  what  is  perhaps  a 
worse  error  and  confuse  an  aesthetic  interest 
in  stained  glass  or  Church  embroidery  with 
a  living  faith. 

Now  what  makes  possible  such  a  spectacle 
as  that  at  Ober-Ammergau.^  Not  money. 
MiUionaires  all  the  world  over  might  club 
together,  but  they  could  not  produce  a 
Passion-Play.  It  is  no  case  of  the  demand 
creating  the  supply.  This  thing  so  touch- 
ing and  wonderful  could  never  have  been 
at  all,  and  would  long  since  have  died  but 
for  the  faith  of  those  who  produce  it.  To 
these  poor  peasants,  so  inferior  to  our  en- 
hghtenment,  this  wonder  is  real.  It  belongs 
to  their  life  as  Christians.  Their  act  is 
solid  with  that  on  Calvary. 

There  is  the  fact  of  which  we  seek  the 
interpretation  —  that  tremendous  event  and 
its  continuing  influence  in  the  life  of  society 
and  the  individual.  We  cannot  separate 
these  things.  If  we  are  to  arrive  at  any 
satisfying  estimate,  we  have  to  take  all 


SIGN  188 

three  as  part  of  one  great  fact:  the  Hfe, 
death,  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
the  society  in  which  His  spirit  acts,  and  the 
present  reahty  of  His  gifts  in  individual 
experience.  We  must  start  from  the  actual 
phenomenon  of  today,  the  individual  Chris- 
tian, who  is  what  he  is  as  sharer  in  the  com- 
mon Ufe  of  the  Church;  and  this  common 
life  is  continuous  with  the  events  of  Calvary 
and  the  first  Easter  and  may  not  be  compre- 
hended apart  from  them;  and  vice  versa. 
Of  any  event  the  evidence  is  to  be  sought 
in  the  effects  which  it  produces  (and  this 
is  the  case  even  with  the  testimony  of  eye- 
witnesses). The  Resurrection  is  no  excep- 
tion to  this  law.  Part  of  its  evidence  is  to 
be  sought  in  that  collection  of  documents 
we  call  the  New  Testament.  But  this  is 
only  part.  Other  parts  are  the  history 
of  the  Church  and  its  living  power  in  the 
experience  of  men  and  women  today. 

Of  these  facts  all  symbohsed  in  the 
Passion-Play  there  are,  roughly  speaking, 
two  interpretations  and  two  only.  Accord- 
ing to  the  former,  rehgion  is  a  phenomenon 
well-nigh  universal.     It  breaks  out  in  Pro- 


184     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

tean  forms,  but  all  are  purely  human.  To 
such  a  view  the  emergence  of  the  Christian 
Faith,  its  victory,  and  its  present  efficacy 
form  merely  the  cardinal  instance  of  this 
universal  phenomenon.  It  has  no  special 
or  unique  value,  owes  much  to  local  and 
partial  influences,  and  though  possibly  the 
highest  form  which  the  religious  instinct 
has  yet  assumed,  is  not  final  and  is  hkely  to 
be  superseded  —  is,  indeed,  already  vanish- 
ing. Whatever  substratum  of  fact  under- 
lies the  Evangelical  narrative,  and  it  is 
not  large,  there  must  have  been  enough  to 
arrest  and  stimulate  the  imagination  of 
mankind. 

Moreover,  as  Gibbon  long  since  pointed 
out  in  his  famous  sixteenth  chapter,  there 
were  other  circumstances  pecuharly  favour- 
able to  the  growth  of  a  society  claiming 
supernatural  credentials  and  assuring  to 
any  man  a  life  beyond.  Slowly  and  after 
many  conflicts  that  society  gathered  co- 
hesion, and  conquering  all  rivals  such  as 
the  cult  of  Mithra  or  Neoplatonism,  came 
at  last  to  dominate  the  civilised  world. 
That  predominance,  more  than  half  tem- 
poral, was  shattered  by  the  Renaissance 


SIGN  185 

and  the  Reformation.  True,  the  Christian 
Church  still  lives  on.  But  it  is  only  a 
living  power  in  small  groups.  Some  of 
its  apparent  strength  is  due  to  its  inherited 
wealth  and  to  the  general  lack  of  higher 
education.  All  this,  however,  is  but  for 
the  moment.  We  are  at  the  beginning  of 
the  end.  Either  the  Christian  Church  will 
lighten  the  ship  of  its  Jonah  burden  of  the 
supernatural  and  live  on  as  a  frankly  human 
institution,  or  it  will  be  superseded  by  some 
fresh  religious  synthesis.  Such  a  synthesis 
would  not  repudiate  the  Divine,  but  would 
rigidly  exclude  all  notions  of  God,  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  developing  life  of  nature, 
including  men.  Its  horizons  would  be  lim- 
ited by  this  world.  It  would  make  a  more 
universal  appeal  than  the  Christian  Faith, 
because  its  claims  would  be  less  startling; 
and  no  man  who  looks  for  the  improvement 
of  the  race  would  find  himself  excluded 
from  it. 

The  naturalistic  theory  of  Christianity 
takes  on  different  colours  with  the  tempera- 
ment of  the  speaker.  From  the  hysterical 
contempt  of  Nietzsche,  the  hostihty  of 
writers  like  Mr.  Dickinson  and  Mr.  Sturt, 


186     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

we  may  pass  through  almost  every  stage 
of  increasing  admiration,  with  one  great 
proviso,  that  Jesus  is  not  to  be  worshipped 
as  God.  Even  among  those  who  adhere 
to  the  Christian  name  there  are  some  who 
treat  Him  as  Httle  more  than  the  first  of 
human  teachers,  while  the  more  extreme 
modernists  openly  avow  that  it  is  only  the 
ideas  of  Christianity  that  matter,  and  that 
it  is  of  no  importance  whether  any  of  the 
alleged  facts,  supernatural  or  not,  happened 
at  all.  We  are  to  rest  in  an  "imaginary 
portrait"  and  rejoice  in  an  inherited  cult, 
heedless  of  aught  but  their  existence  today. 
Others  of  them  will  stop  short  of  this,  yet 
strip  the  central  figure  of  every  actual 
quahty  that  points  beyond,  and  proclaim 
a  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Immanence  little 
removed  from  Pantheism.  A  recent  expres- 
sion to  this  view  in  its  unreheved  crudity 
has  been  given  by  Mr.  Thompson,  the  Dean 
of  Divinity  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford. 
His  work  is  not  valuable  except  as  evidence. 
It  shews  the  inwardness  of  much  that  in 
other  forms  allures  many  minds.  For  in 
that  work  the  immanent  logic  of  a  great 
deal  of  the  critical  movement  is  seen  to 


SION  187 

develop  itself  into  an  assured  repudiation 
of  all  influence  from  a  world  beyond. 

What  I  want  to  emphasize  is  that  within 
this  naturalistic  interpretation  every  va- 
riety of  sentiment  and  moral  ideal  is 
possible,  from  Pagan  to  Catholic  ethics. 
All,  however,  unite  to  repudiate  the  idea 
of  a  unique  revelation  and  of  supernat- 
ural grace  or  facts;  all  are  founded  on 
rejection  of  '*supernaturaUsm"  in  the  usual 
sense. 

Now  let  us  consider  the  opposing  view. 
That  asserts  that  there  is  about  this  episode 
something  more  than  human,  and  that  its 
differences  from  all  other  religions  and 
philosophies  are  more  important  than  its 
resemblances.  It  is  to  man  the  supreme 
guarantee  of  a  something  more  than  the 
visible  world  and  its  development,  even  if 
that  visible  world  be  thought  of  as  spiritual. 
It  marks  the  entrance  into  this  hfe  of 
forces  from  a  spirit  world  beyond,  and  in 
this  sense  is  nothing  if  not  other-worldly. 
Of  course  its  human  aspects  are  not  to  be 
denied,  and  the  chief  perplexities  arise 
from  the  refusal  of  Christians  to  treat  the 


188     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

life  of  Jesus  as  a  mere  "theophany."  As 
Canon  Simpson  says^: 

"The  history  of  Christian  doctrine 
made  it  abundantly  clear  that  men  have 
found  it  harder  to  represent  to  them- 
selves the  real  manhood  of  the  Son  of 
God  than  the  perfect  Godhead  of  the  Son 
of  Man." 

Nor  need  we  suppose  that  there  is  any- 
thing final  in  the  efforts  hitherto  made  to 
express  this  double-faced  fact.  The  recent 
work  of  Dr.  Sanday  on  Ghristologies  Ancient 
and  Modern  is  alone  evidence  of  this;  for 
here  is  a  writer  avowedly  Nicene  seeking  the 
explanation  in  the  doctrine  of  the  subUminal 
self.  How  far  the  Church  will  go  in  this 
direction  one  cannot  at  this  stage  predict, 
but  even  the  suggestion  of  it  is  a  proof  that 
finality  is  not  reached  —  nor  indeed  is  it 
likely  to  be.^  Of  a  fact  so  essentially  mys- 
terious as  the  entrance  into  human  life, 
under  human  conditions,  of  that  Life,  which 
always  burns  and  is  never  extinguished,  all 
our  statements  must  be  so  much  below  the 
truth  that  now  one  side  and  now  the  other 
will  be  emphasized.  The  belief  is  in  the 
supernatural  character  of  this,  that  great 


SIGN  189 

mystery  of  godliness,  of  which  S.  Paul 
spoke,  "God  manifest  in  the  flesh." 

The  form  of  this  belief  may  vary  in  differ- 
ent ages,  and  as  Dr.  Sanday  illustrates,  take 
on  a  different  colour,  even  while  the  sym- 
bolic expression  remains  unchanged;  other- 
wise the  creeds  would  be  something  other 
than  symbols.  All,  however,  who  hold  it 
would  agree  in  this  —  that  in  the  story 
told  in  the  Gospels  there  is  evidence  of  a 
peculiar  outbreak  from  the  spirit  world. 
It  is  not  merely  an  uprush  of  religious  emo- 
tion. This  ** irruption"  of  the  Divine  into 
the  world  of  phenomena  guarantees  the 
nature  of  God  as  being  Love;  it  destroys 
the  presuppositions  of  naturalism,  in  that 
it  assures  to  each  of  us  a  life  hereafter  and 
delivers  us  from  that  strange  disease  of  the 
wiD  we  call  "sin,"  restoring  the  broken 
unity  between  the  soul  and  God ;  of  Whom 
it  reveals  so  much  as  can  be  shewn  in  human 
life. 

In  the  former  of  these  two  views,  even, 
if  we  take  it  as  it  is  nearest  to  the  Nicene 
faith,  the  Christian  fact  has  much  teaching 
for  man.  But  that  teaching  is  of  the  highest 
to  which  human  love  can  aspire.     It  is  a 


190     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

doctrine  of  man.  On  the  latter  view  the 
teaching  is  of  the  depths  to  which  God's 
Love  can  descend.  It  is  a  doctrine  of  God. 
He  stooped  to  conquer.  The  unique  note 
of  the  Christian  rehgion  is  the  humility 
of  God.  Further,  the  one  interpretation 
need  never  get  beyond  the  Divine  Imma- 
nence. The  other  reveals  the  Divine  Tran- 
scendence. It  preserves  the  distinctness  of 
man  and  God  ahke,  while  it  asserts  that 
God  is  able  so  to  limit  HimseK  as  to  be- 
come Incarnate.  It  is  needless  to  develop 
at  length  what  this  view  involves.  For  it 
has  embodied  itself  in  the  Christian  Church. 
The  whole  Catholic  Evangelical  theology 
of  grace,  of  the  Sacraments,  of  the  Atone- 
ment and  the  Incarnation,  is  but  its  expres- 
sion; inadequate,  it  is  true,  and  figurative, 
but  generated  in  the  need  of  defending  the 
one  supreme  fact  of  the  Divine  and  super- 
natural character  of  the  whole  order  against 
interpretations  which  in  the  long  run  would 
have  destroyed  it. 

But  we  must  not  exaggerate.  This  view, 
like  its  contrary,  may  be  held  with  the 
widest  differences  of  detail.    It  is,  as  a  fact, 


SIGN  191 

maintained  by  many  whom  a  rigid  ortho- 
doxy would  repudiate.  It  would  include 
such  men  as  a  historian  who  once  said  to  me, 
"I  believe  firmly  in  the  Divinity  of  Christ 
and  the  Atonement,  but  I  don't  beheve 
in  anything  else,  not  the  Church  or  the 
Sacraments  or  the  Holy  Ghost."  It  would 
include  the  semi-Arian,  who  worships  Christ 
as  Lord  and  holds  firmly  to  the  Logos- 
dodrine,  but  has  difficulties  about  even  the 
simplest  of  the  Creeds.  It  would  include 
those  who  adhered  to  the  formula  suggested 
by  Dr.  Denny,  "I  believe  in  God  through 
Jesus  Christ,"  provided  that  formula  were 
interpreted  according  to  the  previous  argu- 
ment of  the  writer.  It  would  include  some 
who  deny  certain  facts  such  as  the  Birth 
Story  or  the  Empty  Tomb,  which  seem  to 
most  of  us  integral  to  the  supernatural 
nature  of  the  whole.  That  may  be  true. 
For  all  that,  it  is  not  to  be  gainsaid  that 
Professor  Burkitt,^  in  his  pamphlet  on  The 
Failure  of  Liberal  Christianity,  while  he  re- 
jects those  facts,  argues  most  convincingly 
that  the  evidence  of  the  documents  as  a 
whole  compels  the  supernatural  theory  of 
the  origin  of  the  Church  and  justifies  the 


192     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

Athanasian  Creed,  It  is  hardly  too  much  to 
describe  this  pamphlet  as  epoch-making,  for 
it  marks  the  way  in  which  a  devout  mind, 
arguing  from  the  critical  basis,  but  unde- 
terred by  prepossessions  against  the  super- 
natural, is  driven  to  a  position  which  is 
fundamentally  that  of  the  Church.  A 
somewhat  similar  view  is  that  of  Dr. 
Forsyth  in  his  work  on  The  Person  and 
Place  of  Jesus  Christ,  I  need  hardly  add 
that  this  view  of  the  fundamentally  mys- 
terious nature  of  the  New  Testament 
experience  is  held  by  men  owning  every 
kind  of  ecclesiastical  allegiance.  On  the 
other  hand  from  this  standpoint,  there 
would  be  excluded  many  of  the  ultra- 
modernists,  strong  though  they  may  be 
in  the  sense  of  the  value  both  of  the  Church 
and  Sacraments,  and  many  "liberal"  theo- 
logians, who  would  rule  out  the  "supra- 
normal."  Professor  Denny,  Professor  Bur- 
kitt,  Dr.  Forsyth,  Dr.  Garvie,  Dr.  Orr,  Dr. 
Seeberg,  Dr.  Knowling,  Mr.  Wilfrid  Ward, 
Mr.  Gilbert  Chesterton,  the  Bishops  of 
Birmingham  and  Durham,  Evangelical  Dis- 
senters and  Ultramontanes  may  seem  a 
rather  heterogeneous  company.     Doubtless 


SION  19S 

many  of  them  would  condemn  as  woefully 
inadequate  the  theology  that  contents  the 
other.  Yet  all  have  this  in  common.  They 
have  crossed  the  Rubicon.  All  are  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Une  which  divides  the 
natural  from  the  supernatural  theory  of  the 
origin  of  Christianity.  All  are  unable  to 
beheve  that  the  reduced  Christianity  dear 
to  the  Teutonic  savant  comes  at  all  close  to 
the  facts;  all  are  at  one  in  their  refusal 
to  surrender  the  supernatural  in  deference 
to  the  naturahstic  bias. 

It  is  right  to  put  the  question  in  this 
broad  manner,  as  one  which  is  concerned 
with  our  view  of  the  nature  of  the  expe- 
rience as  a  whole.  We  are  putting  the 
cart  before  the  horse,  when  we  argue, 
as  though  the  question  were  first  and  fore- 
most concerned  with  dogma.  Dogma  only 
brings  out  the  impHcations  of  the  super- 
natural view,  and  it  cannot  be  arrived  at 
independently  or  argued  about  as  consisting 
of  so  many  isolated  propositions.  The 
Creeds  are  the  intellectual  expressions  of 
this  faith,  developed  in  the  life  of  the 
Church,  and  they  guard  its  essential  nature, 

14 


194     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

which  is  to  be  supernatural.  It  is  this 
supernatural  character  which  is  its  differ- 
entia.  On  this  we  have  to  make  up  our 
mind  before,  not  after,  we  consider  the 
Creeds.  The  enquirer  must  decide  whether 
or  no  these  supernatural  claims  were  made, 
and  then  whether  he  can  accept  them. 
Either  you  fit  Jesus  Christ  into  the  normal 
categories  or  He  eludes  them.  The  Chris- 
tian Church  is  either  one  episode  in  the 
natural  development  of  mankind  or  it  is 
something  superadded.  That  is  the  real 
difficulty  involved  in  the  Incarnation  and 
in  the  higher  view  about  Church  and  Sac- 
raments. Whatever  class  you  put  them  in, 
you  find  it  inadequate.  Treat  Jesus  Christ 
as  purely  human  and  you  fail  to  explain 
most  of  His  characteristic  deeds  and  words, 
even  if  you  give  up  the  theory  of  fraud. 
Treat  Him  as  God,  and  His  essential  human 
quality.  His  local  temperament  and  hori- 
zons, are  hard  to  comprehend;  though 
indeed  we  never  could  say  beforehand  what 
limitations  of  power  and  knowledge  an 
Incarnation  does  not  involve.  The  Atha- 
nasian  Creed  and  all  Catholic  theology  puts 
the  two  sides  together,  but  does  not  remove 


SION  195 

the  diflSculty.  They  are  never  altogether 
harmonised;  they  never  will  be,  till  we 
reach  the  beatific  vision.  But  any  simpler 
creed  is  even  harder.  For  it  compels  us 
to  give  up  the  facts. 

Moreover,  it  leaves  you  without  any 
adequate  explanation  of  the  origin  and 
expansion  of  the  Church.  As  Gibbon  long 
since  discerned,  the  crucial  diflSculty  of 
the  enquirer  is  that  of  explaining  the 
existence  of  the  Church.  And  indeed  that 
diflSculty  is  greater  than  he  knew.  The 
Church  needs  explanation  not  merely  as 
a  past,  but  as  a  present  fact,  stretching 
back  to  the  dawn  of  history  and  achieving 
since  Gibbon  the  most  marvellous  of  all 
its  revivals.  All  this  you  must  describe 
as  either  part  of  the  natural  course  of 
human  development  or  as  something  cat- 
astrophic breaking  the  chain,  invading 
the  sphere  of  the  natural,  a  gift  from 
beyond. 

As  in  the  words  of  a  writer  I  have  quoted 
more  than  once  —  Eucken^- 

"In  the  case  of  Christianity  it  is  man's 
moral  life  which  harbours  this  contradic- 
tion.    Christianity    holds    that,    down    to 


196     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

the  very  roots  of  his  moral  nature,  man  is 
especially  estranged  from  what  is  right, 
and  therefore  requires  that  he  shall  become 
a  new  creature  and  Hve  a  new  life.  The 
form  which  this  conviction  has  taken  in 
concept  and  in  doctrine  is  no  doubt  open 
to  attack  on  many  sides,  but  so  long  as 
the  fundamental  fact  survived  as  an  in- 
spiration in  human  experience,  it  triumphed 
over  all  the  objections  brought  against 
it.  But  the  modern  world,  dazzled  by 
the  splendour  of  its  own  achievements, 
armed  with  its  consciousness  of  power, 
stimulated  by  its  craving  for  a  fuller  and 
a  richer  life,  has  thrust  such  experience  into 
the  background  and  for  a  time  forgotten 
it.  And  now  the  problems  and  perplexities 
of  the  nineteenth  century  and  our  own 
have  thrust  it  forward  once  more,  and, 
with  growing  insistence,  are  challenging 
the  old  complacent  belief  in  the  work  of 
civiHsation  and  the  light-hearted  enthusi- 
asm for  progress. 

"It  becomes  increasingly  difficult  not 
to  recognise  the  sharp  contradiction  which 
runs  through  the  whole  life  of  man  and 
comes  to  a  head  in  his  moral  behaviour." 


SIGN  197 

And  again,  in  Chnstianity  and  the  New 
Idealism,  he  says: 

"Its  presence  attests  the  invasion  of 
our  life  by  a  new  order  of  reahty,  involving 
a  breach  in  the  causal  order  of  nature, 
tearing  through  the  existing  system  of 
connexions,  rendering  for  ever  impossible 
a  rational  synthesis  of  reality  within  the 
limits  of  sense-experience,  and  precluding 
any  monism  of  the  world  as  we  find  it." 

Decide  this  point  one  way  or  the  other 
and  you  have  decided  everything,  and  no 
mere  jettison  of  this  or  that  detail  will 
bring  you  in  line  with  the  opponent  theory. 
In  the  same  way  that  a  very  small  dose 
of  free  will  means  a  complete  breach  with 
the  rationalist,  so  here  accept  the  super- 
natural in  however  small  a  degree  and  the 
logic  of  it  carries  you  right  on  to  the  Church 
with  the  Creeds.  Nothing  but  some  acci- 
dent of  temper  or  training  will  hinder  you 
from  being  one  with  that  great  continuous 
body,  which  enshrines  this  supernatural 
life  in  all  its  fulness.  Deny  this  supra- 
human  character,  and  however  much  you 
may  gild  your  unbelief  with  phrases  of 
reverence,   and   even   emphasize   devotion 


198     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

to  the  Church  of  your  fathers,  and  desire 
to  be  part  of  the  main  stream  of  Christian 
life,  you  are  yet  on  the  incHned  plane 
which  leads  far  away  from  it.  To  scientific 
fatalism  in  some  form  or  other,  if  not  the 
individual  (for  he  does  not  always  develop 
the  logic  of  his  position),  at  least  the  society, 
which  adopts  such  denial,  will  come  at  the 
last. 

The  problem,  then,  is  one  as  to  the 
transcendental  or  the  normal  character 
of  this  experience  or  group  of  experiences; 
the  central  facts  as  recorded  in  the  New 
Testament,  the  impression  made  by  them 
at  the  time,  and  the  continuance  of  that 
impression  in  the  Church  and  its  individual 
members.  Christian  theology  issues  from 
the  attempt  to  guard  this  truth  of  the 
supernatural  character  of  this  experience 
against  interpretations  which  explicitly  or 
implicitly  involve  its  denial.  Whether  the 
theology  be  coherent  or  well-expressed  is 
one  thing.  That  its  essence  is  this  faith 
in  a  mystery  is  unquestioned  alike  by 
friend  and  foe. 

I  state  the  problem  in  this  way  because 
it  seems  to  me  an  error  to  treat  the  topic 


SION  199 

analytically;  isolating  this  or  that  detail 
and  then  either  from  the  traditional  stand- 
point or  its  opposite  building  up  a  series 
of  conclusions.  As  a  fact,  we  are  dealing 
not  with  a  number  of  isolated  events  appar- 
ently marvellous,  each  to  be  discussed  in 
vacuo,  but  with  a  great  experience  of  human 
life  extending  from  the  converted  sinner  of 
today  right  back  to  "that  strange  man 
upon  the  Cross"  and  all  that  He  implies. 
The  question  is,  What  does  that  experience 
mean?  Even  in  regard  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment it  is  a  mistake  to  adopt  this  purely 
analytic  method.  It  is  not  the  Virgin 
Birth,  or  the  Empty  Tomb,  or  the  Trans- 
figuration, or  the  feeding  of  the  five  thou- 
sand, or  the  walking  on  the  water,  or  the 
tremendous  claims  of  Christ,  or  the  stories 
of  the  Apostles,  or  the  experience  of  S. 
Paul,  or  the  theory  of  S.  John;  it  is  all  these 
things  together.  Or,  to  be  accurate,  it 
is  the  atmosphere,  the  mental  world,  in 
which  all  these  things  take  place,  that  is 
in  question.  Men  would  never  have  made 
this  error  were  it  not  for  our  habit  of  making 
words  and  single  events  a  screen  which  veils 
life  instead  of  reveahng  it,  and  discussing 


200     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

not  real  experience,  but  the  articulate  ex- 
pression of  it,  which  never  is  complete  and 
can  at  best  be  no  more  than  symbolic. 

The  first  thing  to  decide  is  our  view  of 
the  total  character  of  the  narrative,  taken 
in  unison  with  its  living  issues  (as  the  title 
of  the  Kaiser  is  part  of  the  evidence  for 
the  power  of  Julius  Caesar).  When  we  have 
made  up  our  minds  as  to  what  that  character 
is,  and  further,  being  what  it  is,  whether  we 
can  accept  or  reject  it,  then  and  then  only 
shall  we  be  ready  to  discuss  it  in  detail. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  is  precisely 
what  is  done.  Half  of  the  anti-Christian 
criticism  of  the  records,  while  it  professes 
to  be  an  open  enquiry,  is  in  reality  only  an 
examination  of  this  or  that  detail  with  the 
humanist  interpretations  of  the  narrative  as 
a  whole  taken  for  granted,  though  carefully 
concealed.  Too  many  writers  on  the  ortho- 
dox side  have  been  content  to  examine 
these  theories,  without  considering  the  pre- 
suppositions; thus  tacitly  offering  a  victory 
to  their  adversaries. 

But  this  is  not  all.  If  the  problem  be 
primarily  one  about  the  total  impression. 


SION  201 

it  does  not  need  a  specialist  to  determine 
its  results.  On  the  general  character  of 
the  alleged  occurrences  of  the  Gospel,  or 
the  experience  of  the  early  Church,  as 
mirrored  in  S.  Paul,  in  S.  Peter,  in  S.  John, 
it  needs  no  specialist  nor  any  great  knowl- 
edge to  come  to  a  valid  conclusion.  In  this 
matter  the  appeal  to  the  plain  man  and  that 
to  the  historic  consciousness  of  Christen- 
dom comes  to  the  same  thing.  Such  mat- 
ters as  the  piecing  together  of  the  narratives, 
the  priority  of  S.  Mark,  or  the  nature  of  Q, 
or  the  genuineness  of  S.  Peter's  and  S.  Jude's 
Epistles,  can  only  be  argued  by  specialists. 
But  no  expert  is  needed  to  pronounce  on 
the  general  character  of  the  impression 
created  by  the  accounts  of  Jesus  or  the 
experiences  of  S.  Paul.  Nothing  is  needed 
but  attentive  reading,  and  the  critics  who 
would  cut  all  the  extraordinary  elements 
and  leave  a  caput  mortuum  of  morahty 
touched  with  emotion  (yet  still  to  be  called 
Christianity)  would  never  have  won  half 
their  vogue  had  not  the  reading  of  the  New 
Testament  gone  out  of  fashion.  Their 
strength  comes  from  their  appeahng  to  a 
world  which  has  ceased  to  use  the  Bible 


202       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

devotionally.  It  was  a  maxim  of  the 
Reformers  that  the  Scriptures  bore  their 
meaning  on  their  face,  and  that  every 
man  could  be  his  own  interpreter.  Apphed 
to  single  texts  this  notion  is  contrary  to 
fact;  for  we  need  to  go  behind  the  New 
Testament  to  the  society  which  produced 
it,  just  as  we  need  to  go  behind  Dante  or 
Homer  to  the  civilisation  which  environed 
them.  The  maxim  resulted  in  a  greater 
variety  of  views  among  Christians  than  had 
before  seemed  possible;  each  view  basing 
itself  on  the  Bible.  If,  however,  we  take 
the  New  Testament  as  a  whole,  the  Re- 
formers were  not  so  far  wrong.  Whether 
or  no  he  believes  it,  the  plain  man  who 
reads  the  New  Testament  has  little  doubt 
of  the  transcendent  claim  made  by  Jesus 
Christ;  nor  does  he  deny  that  there  was 
an  experience  of  redemption  which  believed 
itself  to  be  connected  with  the  Cross,  and 
of  a  new  life  in  unison  with  the  Risen  Lord. 
How  these  things  are  to  be  harmonised 
may  be  matters  for  the  Church,  and  what 
their  theological  implications  exclude  or 
allow.  How  to  get  them  into  relation  with 
ordinary  life  is  a   problem  still  unsolved. 


SIGN  203 

But  that  this  is  their  general  character  is 
only  to  be  denied  by  that  class  of  mind  that 
asserts  that  Bacon  wrote  Shakespeare,  or, 
like  Samuel  Butler,  that  the  Odyssey  was  a 
suffragist  manifesto.  The  authority  of  the 
Church,  indeed,  here  as  in  other  matters, 
only  operates  to  protect  the  ordinary  man 
against  the  excesses  of  one-sided  talent,  and 
is  indeed  essentially  democratic. 

Still  the  point  remains.  What  are  we  to 
think  of  it  all.^  To  me  it  appears  plain 
that  we  have  evidence  of  some  invasion 
from  that  world  beyond,  whose  possibility 
it  would  be  rash  to  deny.  So  far  as  the 
evidence  goes,  we  have  to  do  with  a  unique 
experience,  paralleled  in  mystical  Utera- 
ture,  but  quite  other  than  normal.  All 
seems  to  point  to  the  gradual  opening  of 
men's  eyes  to  an  element  strange  and 
superhuman  in  the  life  of  Jesus.  Reluc- 
tantly, with  the  slow-moving  inteUigence  of 
peasants,  the  Apostles  began  to  ask.  What 
manner  of  man  is  this.'^  After  long  feehng 
the  attraction  of  His  person,  and  treating 
His  healing  miracles  as  a  thing  of  course, 
they  began  at  last  to  see  in  Him  something 
more  —  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  Living 


204       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

God.  Then  for  a  time  all  their  hopes  were 
dashed  by  the  tragedy  of  Calvary,  to  us  so 
splendid,  to  them  so  chill  and  drab.  Again 
on  reluctant  eyes  there  bursts  the  light  of 
Easter,  and  in  its  blinding  glare  the  Church 
has  lived  ever  since.  What  wonder  if  the 
accounts  be  confused,  or  if  there  are  diffi- 
culties in  the  theology  which  guards  it. 
The  whole  thing  is  difficult,  like  all  ultimate 
facts;  for  mystery  is  in  the  nature  of  things 
and  nothing  real  but  shares  it.  There, 
however,  it  is  dazzling  still,  this  poor  un- 
educated Galilean  criminal,  worshipped  to- 
day as  God  and  starting  a  movement  with 
no  real  parallel  in  history.  For  neither 
the  Buddhists  nor  Mohammed  can  really 
be  compared.  It  is  this,  the  total  massive 
impression  of  something  unearthly,  that 
beats  in  upon  the  reader.  In  the  long  run 
this  impression  carries  evidence  of  its  own 
reality  —  to  all  who  are  not  obsessed  by 
theories,  which  bar  the  door  to  it.  Much 
may  be  attributed  to  the  mythopoeic  faculty. 
But  here  the  simplicity  of  the  writing,  the 
amazing  beauty  of  the  ideal,  the  patent 
fact  that  the  Epistles  of  S.  Paul  utter  an 
actual  personal  experience,  seem  to  point 


SION  205 

against  the  view  that  all  that  is  distinctive 
in  the  events  was  created  by  vivid  imagina- 
tion. This  is  further  strengthened  by  the 
terrific  after-results,  including  the  Ufe  and 
inward  experience  of  today.  It  is  really 
on  account  of  the  impression  of  the  whole 
that  we  believe  in  the  parts;  and  not  vice 
versa.  This  is,  I  take  it,  the  significance 
of  the  use  of  the  term  the  Faith  as  a  single 
thing,  as  it  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  appeal 
to  authority.  There  are  these  three  strange 
facts:  myself  with  my  failures  and  aspira- 
tions,—  many  more  like  me:  the  amazing 
vision  of  Jesus:  and  the  new  Ufe  that 
came  through  Him  and  goes  on  still. 
Apart  from  prepossessions,  what  is  there 
left  me  but  to  say,  "Neither  is  there  any 
other  name  given  under  Heaven,  whereby 
men  may  be  saved"?  Or  as  a  friend  once 
wrote  to  me,  "Perhaps  after  all  there  is  a 
fact  at  the  bottom  of  Christianity." 

I  do  not  say  that  all  this  can  be  proved, 
but  I  do  say  that  there  is  a  cumulative 
argument.  On  the  personal,  the  social,  and 
the  historic  side  considerations  arise  which 
mutually  support  each  other.  On  the  actual 
matter  of  historical  enquiry  about  the  cen- 


206       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

tral  figure,  there  is  once  more  a  cumulative 
argument.  No  single  detail  is  conclusive 
by  itself,  but  all  together  make  a  positive 
unity  which  is  not  so  readily  found  in  the 
alternative  explanation.  These  other  ex- 
planations are  not  impossible,  but  they  do 
great  violence  to  documents  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  Church  and  have  all  the 
marks  of  a  non-natural  reconstruction, 
adopted  in  obedience  to  a  preconceived 
theory.  All  that  the  traditional  view  needs 
for  its  acceptance  in  its  main  features  is  the 
removal  of  the  presupposition  that  miracles 
do  not  happen.  There  is,  I  think,  in  this 
view  a  definite  ground  of  assurance  to  those 
whose  craving  is  well  described  by  Mr. 
Hardy  in  The  Gospel  of  Pain.^ 

"Men  and  women  need  something  more 
central  than  the  emotions,  more  sane  than 
the  wistful  mood  of  aspiration.  They  do 
not  require  *  demonstration'  or  'logical 
proof;  they  have  reacted  from  'schemes' 
and  'systems';  but  conviction  they  do 
want.  They  want  assurance  on  common- 
sense  grounds.  Such  grounds  they  have 
in  practical  life,  where  no  one  pays  a  thought 
to  logic  or  waits  a  moment  for  demonstra- 


SIGN  -  207 

tion.  Are  they  to  be  blamed  for  requiring 
such  in  religion?  Granted  one  conviction, 
brought  out  of  the  facts  of  Hfe,  one  clear 
hint  of  order  and  purpose,  and  the  spiritual 
assurance  of  the  ages  of  faith  *  might  again 
inspire  the  world.' "  ^ 

We  are  asked  whether  it  is  wise  to  accept 
this  Faith.  We  reply:  it  is  the  part  of 
wisdom  to  accept  that  account  of  things 
which  includes  the  relevant  facts.  Whether 
or  no  we  can  coordinate  the  facts  into  a 
coherent  system,  we  know  not.  That  is  a 
matter  of  faith.  There  will  always  be  those 
who  value  and  those  who  dislike  a  clearly 
articulated  "diagrammatic"  view.  In  any 
case  we  have  to  get  the  facts  in,  however  we 
are  to  explain  them.  Now  this  Faith  in- 
cludes as  nothing  else  does  the  facts  of  life 
as  it  is  lived.  Avowedly  it  appeals  to  the 
nature  of  man,  as  a  being  who  chooses, 
who  loves,  and  who  sins.  The  other  sys- 
tems all  tend  to  ignore  these  facts  in  whole 
or  in  part. 

So  far  as  the  facts  of  human  life  are  con- 
cerned, no  system  has  been  developed  for 
deahng  with  them  at  all  comparable  to  that 


X 


\ 


N 


208       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

of  the  Christian  Church.  No  view  which  re- 
pudiates freedom  but  in  the  long  run  breaks 
upon  the  rock  of  personahty.  Again  no 
system  which  is  not  social,  no  purely  indi- 
viduahst  religion,  but  is  false  to  the  nature 
of  man;  and  sociaUty  involves  authority. 
\  It  is  only  owing  to  the  high  organisation 

of  modern  life,  and  the  support  given  to 
each  individual,  that  sheer  individualism 
is  even  conceivable.^ 

Rehgion  without  a  Church  is  not  really 
possible,  for  not  only  is  man  a  social  animal, 
but  religion  is  essentially  social.  And  more 
and  more  is  the  comparative  study  of 
religion  making  it  clear  that  men  are  funda- 
mentally religious.  This  is  indeed  one  of 
the  main  diiOSculties  that  face  the  apologist. 
For  while  religion  in  general  is  seen  to  be  a 
necessary  element  in  the  make-up  of  human 
life,  the  same  observation  by  no  means  tells 
in  favour  of  any  religion  in  particular;  rather 
it  tends  to  an  impartial  patronage  of  all. 
Taking  it,  however,  as  at  last  settled  that 
religion  is  a  human  property,  we  may  well 
proceed  to  ask  ourselves  whether  the  Catho- 
lic Church  does  not  enshrine  the  central 
experience  of  the  race,  and  whether  any 


SIGN  209 

of  the  competing  systems  is  seriously  to  be 
compared  with  it.  That  does  not  mean 
that  they  have  nothing  to  teach  us.  Even 
in  our  worship  we  have  become  too  deeply 
occidentalised,  and  we  need  once  more  to 
drink  at  the  Eastern  springs.  We  are 
indeed  doing  so;  the  growth  of  interest  in 
mysticism  is  evidence. 

Speaking  on  the  whole,  can  anyone  seri- 
ously maintain  that  any  other  religion  is 
likely  to  take  the  place  of  the  Christian,  or 
that  any  other  society  can  approach  the 
Christian  Church  in  the  production  of  the 
highest  characters.?  All  societies,  even  re- 
ligious, are  ultimately  judged  by  the  type 
of  character  they  tend  to  produce.  For, 
having  settled  the  problem  of  freedom,  it 
remains  to  be  seen  what  you  will  do 
with  it.  Some  of  the  most  passionate 
exponents  of  freedom  at  this  moment  are 
in  the  anti-Christian  camp;  they  despise 
the  Christian  character.  I  do  not  mean  the 
character  of  Christians.  It  is  not  because 
we  fall  short  of  our  ideal  (we  all  do  more 
or  less) ;  it  is  our  ideal  itself  that  wins  this 
scorn.  So  long  as  men  are  content  to 
admire  Christ  and  the  Christian  character, 

15 


210       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

SO  long  will  they  find  grounds  good  or  bad 
for  adhering  to  the  Church.  Nietzsche, 
indeed,  as  we  saw  last  time,  was  aware 
of  this  and  directed  his  polemic  on  this  very 
point.  If  you  dislike  the  Christian  charac- 
ter and  consider  that  its  virtues  are  vices, 
there  is  no  use  arguing  about  the  evidence 
of  the  Faith.  You  will  surely  find  grounds 
for  discarding  it.  If  you  admire  the  Chris- 
tian and  find  in  holiness  "the  beauty  of 
God,"  then  you  will  in  the  long  run  sur- 
render yourself  to  that  society  in  which  it 
thrives,  or  at  least  you  will  desire  to  do  so, 
though  you  may  be  deterred  either  by  the 
intellectual  diflSculty  or  by  the  rarity  with 
which  the  ideal  is  realized.  At  least  your 
sympathies  will  be  all  on  that  side.  The 
question  of  every  caUing,  every  school, 
and  every  profession  is  not  what  it  teaches, 
but  the  kind  of  men  it  produces.  A  man's 
own  choice  is  determined  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten  by  whether  he  hkes  the  law  or  the 
army  or  literature,  and  finds  in  it  the  kind 
of  men  he  cares  to  Mve  with.  So  with  the 
Christian  Church.  The  supreme  practical 
question  is  what  kind  of  people  does  she 
make;  all  individuals  are  largely  a  product 


SIGN  211 

of  their  society.  In  so  far  as  you  are  able 
to  compare  Christians  with  non-Christians, 
which  type  would  you  wish  to  be  like? 
Only,  be  it  remembered,  it  is  unfair  to 
compare  the  mere  average  Christian  with 
some  "saint  of  rationahsm"  hke  John 
Stuart  Mill,  or  even  to  take  the  least 
inspired  moments  of  the  saint  and  bid  men 
judge  his  inferiority.  The  Church  must 
be  judged  by  its  truly  characteristic  pro- 
ducts no  less  than  a  school  or  college 
or  nation.  I  do  not  believe  that  in  our 
apologetic  we  have  made  enough  use  of  the 
saints.  We  should  argue  on  a  sounder 
basis,  if  we  talked  a  httle  more  of  the 
martyrs.  It  would  not  in  all  things  make 
matters  easier.  For  the  modern  world 
tolerates  sanctity  rather  than  admires  it, 
and  outside  the  Bible  regards  it  as  almost 
wicked  to  believe  in  saints.  Further,  it  has  a 
notion  of  what  the  saints  are  that  is  almost 
entirely  false  to  the  facts,  and  before  they 
can  be  made  an  apologetic  argument  their 
character,  their  variety,  their  enormous 
practical  influence,  and  their  abihties  need 
to  be  better  known.  When,  however,  the 
lay  figure  of  a  most  unnatural  being  has 


21^       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

been  replaced  by  the  living  reality,  it  will 
be  found  that  they  were  and  are  the  most 
persuasive  of  all  arguments. 

For  it  is  this  sharing  in  a  great  society,  this 
communion  of  saints,  which  is  one  great 
charm  of  the  Christian  life.  By  it  we  enter 
into  the  life  of  the  striving  sinners  (the 
best  description  of  the  saint)  of  all  ages  and 
make  their  achievements  ours.  We  are 
united  not  only  with  the  living,  but  with 
the  dead.  There  is  truth  in  the  anachro- 
nisms of  the  Old  Masters,  who  paint  a  S. 
Augustine,  a  S.  Francis,  a  S.  Chrysostom 
kneeling  simultaneously  at  the  foot  of  the 
Cross.  So  with  other  things.  There  are 
elements  in  the  doctrine,  in  the  devotion, 
in  the  ritual,  even  in  vestment  and  gesture, 
which  sway  us  with  the  accumulated  force 
of  all  the  generations  who  have  used  them 
and  help  us  to  share  in  "the  long  result  of 
time."  All  authority  is  social  in  its  nature; 
it  is  the  life  of  the  community,  larger  than 
all  its  members,  in  which  these  things  grow 
to  maturity  and  wherein  all  are  welded  to 
harmony.  In  a  thousand  subtle  and  im- 
perceptible ways  this  authority  is  all  about 
us,  uniting  in  intimacy  the  present  and  the 


SIGN  213 

past,  the  near  and  the  far.  A  man  who 
takes  part  in  a  high  celebration  of  the 
Eucharist  is  a  witness  and  a  sharer  in  the 
unity  of  history.  In  this  worship  he  is 
carried  far  back  through  many  ages,  breath- 
ing cHmates  older  than  the  Christian,  and 
he,  a  modern,  is  at  one  with  primitive  man 
and  also  has  the  promise  of  the  future.'^ 
It  is  then,  as  gathering  in  itself  the  religious 
experience  of  mankind,  that  the  Christian 
Church  makes  its  appeal,  and,  as  sharing 
in  the  central  stream  of  the  Life,  that  the 
Catholic  would  justify  himself.  For  reasons, 
not  relevant  to  discuss  here,  I  do  not  believe 
the  theory  of  Papal  omnipotence  to  be 
central.  But  facts  appear  to  shew  that 
the  further  we  go  from  what  is  Catholic, 
the  greater  danger  we  are  in  of  becoming, 
in  Tyrrell's  phrase,  "pert  and  provincial"; 
even  though  our  devotion  to  Jesus  be  real, 
there  is  in  such  cases  a  narrowness  and  lack 
of  freedom,  because  so  many  of  the  treasures 
of  the  past  have  been  deliberately  foregone. 
In  England  in  the  past  we  have  been  too 
"provincial,"  and  we  do  well  to  lend  all 
honour  to  those  who  are  striving  to  restore 
in  all  their  touching  and  immemorial  beauty 


214       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

certain  age-long  notes  of  CathoKc  faith, 
notably  those  which  have  to  do  with  the 
Communion  of  Saints.  All  this  may  be 
held  with  the  widest  allowance  for  dif- 
ference in  local  custom  and  national  feel- 
ing, no  less  than  for  the  individual 
temperaments,  which  are  not  intended  all 
to  emphasize  the  same  aspects  of  faith 
and  worship. 

All  this,  of  course,  may  be  denied.  It 
may  be  said  that  man  needs  no  religion, 
that  it  is  but  a  passing  phase  nearly  over, 
and  that  we  have  at  length  entered  on  the 
positive  epoch,  as  described  by  Comte. 
Comte,  however,  it  must  never  be  forgotten, 
was  driven  to  crystallize  into  a  religious 
system  that  enthusiasm  for  humanity  which 
he  desiderated,  making,  as  has  been  said, 
a  sort  of  parody  of  the  Roman  Church. 
So  far  as  can  be  judged  by  observation, 
however,  it  seems  improbable  that  either 
the  agnostic  or  the  purely  rationalist  scheme 
will  satisfy  the  mass  of  men,  but  only  a  few 
who  live  under  conditions  highly  artificial 
and  many  who  do  not  reflect  at  all.  Nor 
do  I  deny  the  extreme  difficulty  of  the 


SIGN  215 

fundamental  faith  of  the  Christian  in  Love, 
as  Lord  of  all  things.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God,  to  which  some  would 
fain  reduce  Christianity,  in  the  hope  of 
making  it  easy  and  universal,  is  to  me  the 
profoundest  of  all  stumbHng  blocks.  Look- 
ing at  the  world  of  today,  with  its  masses 
of  blighted  Hves  and  amazing  wastefulness, 
not  only  of  happiness,  but  of  character,  it 
is  hard  indeed  to  credit  the  saying  that 
there  is  a  heavenly  Father  "without  whom 
no  sparrow  falls  to  the  ground."  Plausible 
grounds  may  be  adduced  for  treating  all 
known  existence,  the  history  of  the  world 
as  we  have  it,  as  a  mere  effort  of  "the 
will  to  power,"  blind  and  conscientious. 
Nietzsche's  doctrine  is  much  more  than  the 
ravings  of  a  lunatic,  and  at  times  threatens 
to  overwhelm  the  strongest.  At  other 
times  the  view  of  things  propounded  by 
another  philosopher,  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell, 
that  it  is  mere  purposeless  vanity,  seems 
to  come  to  me  with  a  force  well-nigh  irre- 
sistible. Certainly  no  one  can  prove  it 
false.  Let  me  read  the  eloquent  words  in 
which  he  proclaims  it.  It  is  from  The 
Religion  of  the  Free  Man, 


216       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

^*Such  in  outline,  but  even  more  purpose- 
less, more  void  of  meaning,  is  the  world 
which  Science  presents  for  our  belief.  Amid 
such  a  world,  if  anywhere,  our  ideals  hence- 
forward must  find  a  home.  That  Man  is 
the  product  of  causes  which  had  no  previ- 
sion of  the  end  they  were  achieving;  that 
his  origin,  his  growth,  his  hopes  and  fears, 
his  loves  and  his  beliefs  are  but  the  out- 
come of  accidental  collocations  of  atoms; 
that  no  fire,  no  heroism,  no  intensity  of 
thought  and  feeling  can  preserve  an  in- 
dividual life  beyond  the  grave;  that  all  the 
labour  of  the  ages,  all  the  devotion,  all  the 
inspiration,  all  the  noonday  brightness  of 
human  genius  are  destined  to  extinction 
in  the  vast  death  of  the  solar  system,  and 
that  the  whole  temple  of  Man's  achieve- 
ment must  inevitably  be  buried  beneath 
the  debris  of  a  universe  in  ruins  —  all  these 
things,  if  not  quite  beyond  dispute,  are 
yet  so  nearly  certain  that  no  philosophy 
which  rejects  them  can  hope  to  stand. 
Only  within  the  scaffolding  of  these  truths, 
only  on  the  firm  foundation  of  unyielding 
despair,  can  the  'soul'  habitation  hence- 
forth be  safely  built." 


SIGN  217 

"How,  in  such  an  alien  and  inhuman 
world,  can  so  powerless  a  creature  as  Man 
preserve  his  aspirations  untarnished?  A 
strange  mystery  it  is  that  Nature,  omnipo- 
tent but  bhnd,  in  the  revolutions  of  her 
secular  hurrying  through  the  abysses  of 
space,  has  brought  forth  at  last  a  child, 
subject  still  to  her  power,  but  gifted  with 
sight,  with  knowledge  of  good  and  evil, 
with  the  capacity  of  judging  all  the  works 
of  his  unthinking  Mother.  In  spite  of 
Death  the  mark  and  seal  of  parental  con- 
trol, Man  is  yet  free,  during  his  brief 
years,  to  examine,  criticise,  to  know,  and 
in  imagination  to  create.  To  him  alone, 
in  the  world  with  which  he  is  acquainted, 
this  freedom  belongs;  and  in  this  lies  his 
superiority  to  the  resistless  forces  that 
control  his  outward  life." 

"Brief  and  powerless  is  Man's  life;  on 
him  and  all  his  race  that  slow,  sure  doom 
falls  pitiless  and  dark.  Blind  to  good  and 
evil,  reckless  of  destruction,  omnipotent 
matter  rolls  on  its  relentless  way;  for  Man, 
condemned  today  to  lose  his  dearest,  to- 
morrow himself  to  pass  through  the  gate  of 
darkness,  it  remains  only  to  cherish,  ere 


218       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

yet  the  blow  falls,  the  lofty  thoughts  that 
ennoble  his  little  day;  disdaining  the 
coward  terrors  of  the  slave  of  Fate,  to 
worship  at  the  shrine  that  his  own  hands 
have  built;  undismayed  by  the  empire  of 
Chance,  to  preserve  a  mind  free  from  the 
wanton  tyranny  that  rules  his  outward 
life;  proudly  defiant  of  the  irresistible 
forces  that  tolerate,  for  a  moment,  his 
knowledge  and  his  condemnation,  to  sus- 
tain alone,  a  weary  but  unyielding  Atlas, 
the  world  that  his  own  ideals  have  fashioned 
despite  the  trampling  march  of  unconscious 
power." 

Now  what  destroys  such  doctrines  is  not 
demonstration.  They  cannot  be  demon- 
strated to  be  false,  or  else  why  should  Mr. 
Russell  believe  them.'^  Their  true  antago- 
nist is  always  faith,  the  faith  that,  however 
bad  things  may  appear,  reality  cannot  be 
so  hopeless  as  that  would  make  it.  Life 
cannot  be  such  a  senseless  tragedy  as  all 
that.  Just  as  the  supreme  argument  for 
immortality  is  the  spectacle  of  some  strong 
and  noble  character,  dying  in  early  life  — 
for  we  feel  that  all  cannot  be  over  with  it 
—  so  against  the  sight  of  nature  and  all 


SION  219 

her  cruelties,  what  is  there  to  be  said  except 
that  human  hearts  will  not  acquiesce  in  a 
world  whose  sole  meaning  is  that  it  has 
none?  This  is  the  final  ground  of  all 
rehgious  beUef,  whether  Christian  or  not. 
As  Mr.  Bradley  puts  it  in  regard  to  his 
philosophy: 

"Is  it  after  all  a  paradox  that  our  con- 
ceptions tend  all  more  or  less  to  be  one- 
sided, and  that  life  as  a  whole  is  something 
higher  and  something  truer  than  those 
fragmentary  ideas,  by  which  we  seek  to 
express  and  formulate  it?  Is  it  after  all 
the  man  who  is  most  consistent  who  on 
the  whole  attains  to  greatest  truth?  To 
most,  if  not  to  all  of  us,  I  should  have 
thought  that  there  came  moments  when  it 
seemed  clear  that  the  Universe  is  too  much 
everywhere  for  our  understanding.  Any 
truth  of  ours,  no  matter  what,  fails  to 
contain  the  entirety  of  that  which  it  tries 
to  embrace,  and  hence  is  falsified  by  the 
reality.  ...  7/  7  were  not  convinced  of 
[this]  on  the  ground  of  metaphysics,  I  should 
still  believe  it  upon  instinct.  And,  though  I 
am  willing  to  concede  that  my  metaphysics 
may  be  wrong,  there  is,  I  think,  nothing 


220     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

which  could  persuade  Trie  that  my  instinct  is 
not  right, ''^ 

"The  immanence  of  the  Absolute  in  finite 
centres,  and  of  finite  centres  in  the  Absolute, 
I  have  always  set  down  as  inexpHcable. 
Those  to  whom  philosophy  has  to  explain 
everything  need  therefore  not  trouble  them- 
selves  with   it." « 

This  refusal  is  an  act  of  faith.  It  cannot 
be  consciously  justified  to  those  who  will 
not  make  it.  Yet,  I  think,  it  may  be  said 
to  be  involved  as  a  presupposition  of  all 
purposeful  activity.^  And  it  also  will  carry 
us  on  to  some  view  of  ultimate  reality, 
which  makes  it  at  least  analogically  per- 
sonal. We  cannot  rest  in  the  belief  that 
the  world  as  a  whole  is  lacking  in  those 
personal  relations  which  are  the  reality  of 
life  here,  and  without  which  the  eternal 
home  is  no  home.  We  demand  imperiously 
the  hope  of  intimacy  with  the  secret 
of  all  things;  and  intimacy  means  to 
us  communion,  the  mutual  love  of  spirits, 
and  this  intimacy  between  the  derived 
and  the  original  Spirit  is  only  another 
way  of  expressing  the  Fatherhood  of 
God. 


SIGN  m 

I  spoke  of  faith  as  the  supreme  argument 
against  the  difficulty  raised  by  the  apparent 
waste  and  cruelty  of  the  world.  There  is 
another  —  the  authority  of  Jesus.  His  un- 
broken trust  in  His  Father  gives  us  warrant 
even  stronger  than  that  sense  of  which  I 
have  been  speaking.  This  authority  is  to 
many  of  us  a  support  when  our  own  per- 
suasion seems  breaking.  It  is  said  that 
this  doctrine  is  the  sum  total  of  the  Chris- 
tian Faith;  that  as  the  teaching  of  Jesus, 
it  is  sufficient;  that  all  the  supernatural 
elements  may  be  omitted  or  relegated  to  a 
secondary  place.  This  it  was  His  mission 
to  proclaim.  This  involves  no  difficulties 
and  no  assertion  of  the  miraculous.  Yet 
in  that  case,  what  is  the  use  of  it?  If  the 
doctrine  of  Jesus  was  a  mere  surmise,  it  is 
no  better  than  yours  or  mine,  and  can  be 
to  us  no  support  at  times,  when  "all  melts 
under  our  feet."  Jesus'  doctrine  of  the 
Heavenly  Father  might  be  only  one  more 
beautiful  dream,  were  it  not  for  that  in 
Jesus  which  enabled  Him  to  speak  securely. 
If  He  were  not  raised  above  that  conjectural 
quagmire  in  which  we  "follow  wandering 
fires,"  why  should  we  trust  in  what  He 


n^      CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

tells  us?  The  difficulties  of  belief  are  at 
times  so  tremendous  that  you  cannot  hold 
the  truth  even  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God 
without  a  view  of  Jesus,  as  beyond  man, 
which  leads  right  on  to  the  Creeds.  And 
so  the  question  at  the  last  comes  back  to 
the  same  point:  Whom  say  ye  that  Jesus 
is?  What  is  the  total  impression  of  Jesus 
on  mankind?  And  how  are  we  to  set  forth 
our  relation  to  it?  Can  we  jBnd  any  method 
more  adequate  than  the  Faith  adumbrated 
in  the  Creeds  and  lived  by  the  Church, 
of  which  they  are  an  element? 

As  we  saw  at  the  outset,  it  is  altogether 
a  fallacious  method  to  treat  the  question 
as  though  it  were  all  concerned  with  docu- 
ments. There  is  no  reason  for  studying 
documents  of  this  or  any  other  matter 
in  vacuo.  It  is  always  something  in  our 
life  here  and  now  that  drives  us  to  that 
study.  We  shall  never  get  right  even 
educationally  till  we  begin  history  at  the 
right  end,  which  is  today;  not  1066,  or 
476,  or  753,  or  any  other  arbitrary  date. 
The  ground  for  enquiry  into  the  past  must 
be  the  present  or  the  future.  That  is  what 
starts  us  off.    Above  all  in  regard  to  this 


SION  223 

question  of  questions,  I  ask  myseK,  How 
am  I  to  interpret  certain  living  facts,  the 
Christian  Church  here,  myself  now  speak- 
ing, and  the  general  philosophic  chaos, 
which  is  only  one  aspect  of  the  more  uni- 
versal human  muddle?  I  am  not  as  a 
Christian  professing  a  belief  in  Christ  as 
one  who  once  hved.  It  is  no  far-off  memory 
of  one  who  told  of  God,  but  the  sharing  in 
a  new  Hfe,  which  is  nourished  by  union 
with  one  alive.  Nor,  on  the  other  hand, 
do  I  adhere  solely  to  a  present  society, 
energising  in  His  name.  That  society  has 
its  credentials,  which  are  submitted  to 
scrutiny.  Nor  again  is  it  only  in  the  figure 
of  Christ,  nor  in  the  Church  as  a  community 
for  winning  holiness,  nor  in  its  history  as 
authentic,  nor  in  its  miracles  as  facts,  but 
because  all  these  are  a  source  of  peace  and 
strength  to  me  —  me  a  loving,  sinning, 
choosing  being.  Nor  again  is  it  because 
there  are  no  historical  perplexities  and  no 
difficulties  for  thought  that  I  accept  what 
I  do,  but  I  find  that  every  other  alter- 
native is  even  worse;  that  it  either  ignores 
material  facts  and  pretends  to  escape  diffi- 
culties, which  in   reality  it  enhances;    or 


224     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

from  having  a  lower  ideal  it  preaches  a 
view  of  things  too  horrible  to  be  endured, 
save  on  a  compulsion  which  it  does  not 
prove;  or  that  it  frankly  gives  up  the  prob- 
lem as  hopeless.  And  none  of  these  posi- 
tions but  seem  to  me  on  the  whole  less 
tenable  than  the  Christian.  All  these  argu- 
ments for  faith,  positive  and  negative  alike, 
come  with  an  accumulated  force,  which 
seems  to  me  so  tremendous  that  I  incline 
very  strongly  to  accept  them.  Moreover, 
the  total  character  of  the  Christian  story 
seems  to  me  so  strongly  to  point  to  an 
irruption  into  this  world  of  powers  from  that 
beyond,  that  short  of  compulsion  I  hesitate 
to  reject  it. 

And  so  the  question  must  be  put.  Do 
we  know  enough  of  reality  to  pronounce 
a  priori  as  incredible  such  a  narrative  as 
that  of  the  Gospels,  supported  as  it  is  by 
the  statements  of  the  Epistles,  actualised 
in  the  Church  and  the  individual  of  today  .f* 
On  this  point  enough  has  already  been  said 
and  I  need  not  labour  it  further. 

No  bigotry  is  more  intense  and  less 
amenable  to  evidence  than  that  dogmatism 
which,  while  proclaiming  man's  ignorance  of 


SIGN  225 

the  secret  of  things,  asserts  also  that  he 
knows  enough  of  that  secret  to  declare  that 
it  could  not  communicate  itself  through 
Jesus  Christ.  I  grant  the  difficulties  in- 
volved in  the  extreme  views  of  God's  power 
to  limit  Himself,  which  the  Incarnation  im- 
plies, but  to  deny  that  it  was  possible  is 
pure  assumption  and  springs  from  a  Pagan 
view  of  God,  as  essentially  proud.  I  grant 
the  difficulties  of  Christian  theology,  but 
it  does  guard  its  supreme  treasure,  the 
supernatural,  and  God's  entry  into  human 
life  in  Christ  Jesus.  Once  satisfied  of  the 
generally  supra-normal  character  of  the 
Gospel  narrative,  I  find  it  the  part  of  wis- 
dom to  put  myself  into  living  union  with 
the  society  which  makes  that  belief  active. 
By  such  admission  we  are  in  face  of 
stupendous  mysteries.  Nor  can  human 
language  ever  be  adequate  to  set  them  out. 
The  teaching  of  S.  Paul  on  the  Atonement 
and  the  person  of  Christ,  and  of  S.  John 
on  the  mystical  union  and  the  Sacraments, 
and  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  early 
Church  is  crowded  with  mystery.  So  am 
I.  These  things  are  congruous  with  our 
sense  of  wonder  in  the  world  and  in  our 

16 


CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

own  life.  That  a  world  so  strange  as  this 
should  have  as  its  core  a  secret  so  marvel- 
lous as  that  revealed  in  the  Cross  and 
Passion  and  Rising  again  of  Jesus,  is  to 
me  but  natural.  What  does  seem  to  me 
false  to  that  reality  in  which  I  live  is  the 
clear  daylight  of  naturalism,  or  the  articu- 
lated scheme  of  rationalist  thought.  All 
views  of  the  world  end  in  mystery  —  and 
an  act  of  faith.  In  agnosticism  there  is 
no  light  at  all.  Pantheism,  with  its  pathetic 
confidence  in  an  ever  incomprehensible 
Absolute,  its  denial  of  true  personality, 
and  its  failure  to  explain  the  delusion  of 
it,  seems  to  me,  despite  obvious  attractions, 
less  credible  and  less  true  to  the  facts  of 
life,  while  even  fuller  of  mystery.  The 
Christian  Faith,  with  its  teaching  of  God 
as  Love,  and  therefore  as  Father  and 
Saviour,  and  of  human  hfe  as  redeemable 
and  as  seen  through  the  Resurrection  glory, 
if  it  does  not  solve  all  mysteries,  leaves  us 
more  hopeful  than  any  other.  Theology, 
so  far  as  it  errs,  does  so  by  over-rationalising 
rather  than  by  profaning  its  mysteries. 
But  it  does  its  work  so  long  as  it  preserves 
the  sense  of  the  stupendous  nature  of  those 


SIGN  227 

doings  in  Palestine  and  their  refusal  to  be 
classed  in  the  ordinary  categories. 

Again  we  have  admitted,  and  it  was  the 
purpose  of  the  last  lecture  to  emphasize, 
the  fact  of  the  vast  differences  between 
the  mental  climate  of  the  Christian  Church 
and  that  of  our  own  day.  Any  acceptance 
of  the  Faith  as  supernatural,  even  allowing 
for  much  that  is  local  and  transitory  in 
form  of  expression,  involves  us  in  great 
difficulties,  for  it  invites  us  to  breathe  a 
different  atmosphere.  It  is  this  sense  of 
the  difference  of  climate  that  forms  to  many 
the  insurmountable  obstacle.  But  it  is 
not  in  reality  such,  except  on  the  assump- 
tion that  ours  is  altogether  superior  and 
that  the  other  contains  no  valuable  ingredi- 
ents which  we  lack.  On  grounds  stated  in 
the  first  part  of  our  discussion  I  am  driven 
to  reject  these  assumptions.  Despite  our 
vaunted  enhghtenment,  the  mental  habits 
of  our  own  day  appear  to  me  curiously 
superficial.  Whole  tracts  of  the  life  of 
the  spirit  are  to  them  a  terra  incognita. 
If  certain  dominant  tendencies  continue 
unchecked,  we  should  soon  be  even  in 
worse  case,  for  these  tendencies  will  stamp 


228       CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

out  certain  inherited  counter-tendencies, 
which  linger  on  and  have  still  some  influence. 
The  point  is,  that  the  world  needs  and  is 
crying  out  for  some  way  of  escape  from  that 
intellectual  prison  house  which  it  has  built 
for  itself.  Such  a  way  of  escape  is  offered 
by  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  and  that  which 
seems  to  outsiders  its  foolishness  is  in 
reality  the  very  wisdom  for  which  they 
are  seeking.  It  holds  the  open  sesame  into 
a  larger  world,  the  talisman  of  a  Hfe  freer 
and  less  sophisticated  than  that  of  the 
atmosphere  of  present  day  intellectualism. 
It  lifts  us  from  the  dry  bones  of  theory  to 
the  abounding  life  of  the  Spirit,  It  is 
indeed  a  magic  which  relieves  our  minds, 
tired  with  the  riddle  of  things,  and  intro- 
duces us  to  a  world  where  we  are  free. 

For  it  is  indeed  mainly  our  own  theories 
of  things  that  we  have  to  reconcile  with  the 
presuppositions  of  Christianity.  The  spec- 
tacle of  man  as  a  free  and  sinful  spirit, 
and  his  inner  knowledge  of  the  tragedy  of 
himself,  the  picture  of  God  as  Father  and 
Saviour,  the  philosophy  of  suffering  as 
revealed  in  the  Cross,  the  Sacramental 
gift  at  once  natural  and  supernatural  — 


SION  229 

all  this,  if  hard  to  reconcile  with  speculative 
theories,  is  congruous  with  life  as  it  is  daily 
lived.  It  is  only  when  we  set  up  our  modern 
categories,  useful  for  certain  aspects  of  life, 
and  put  them  between  us  and  real  experi- 
ence, that  we  find  the  difficulties  insuperable. 
A  child's  laughter  or  a  woman's  tears  make 
short  work  of  all  such  phantasms  of  the 
spirit.  The  Gospel  is  the  freshest  and  most 
original  thing  in  the  world,  while  the  tone  of 
modern  intellectualism,  with  all  its  culture, 
is  at  bottom  commonplace  and  middle  aged. 
Of  course  these  things  are  mere  pre- 
sumptions. They  may  lessen  the  diffi- 
culties to  faith  in  one  who  desires  it.  They 
are  not  conclusive.  Nothing  is.  No  man 
who  is  honest  but  echoes  at  times  the  reply 
of  Dr.  Johnson  to  Boswell,  who  declared 
there  was  quite  enough  evidence  —  "  Sir,  I 
could  wish  for  more."  God  leaves  us  free 
to  take  what  view  of  life  we  please.  Against 
our  will  we  shall  not  be  driven  even  "to 
the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus."  The  argument 
most  nearly  conclusive  is  the  atmosphere 
of  the  New  Testament  and  its  congruity 
with  our  own  experience.  It  is  the  constant 
pouring  in  of  that  atmosphere  upon  the 


230     CIVILISATION  AT  THE  CROSS  ROADS 

mind  of  a  man,  persuaded  alike  of  his  own 
failure  and  the  world's  need  of  redemption, 
that  is  most  likely  to  bring  him  to  the  foot 
of  the  Cross.  For  that  is  where  we  all 
have  at  last  to  come.  Christ  does  not 
reveal  Himself  to  those  who  are  satisfied. 
Why  should  He?  They  do  not  want  Him. 
It  is  only  as  a  man  is  ready  to  cry,  "What 
must  I  do  to  be  saved?"  that  the  answer 
will  come,  "BeUeve  on  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  and  thou  shalt  be  saved." 

For  that  is  what  it  all  means.  I  have 
spoken  of  the  Church  and  her  history,  nor 
could  I  set  forth  strongly  enough  my  hope 
that  men  would  enter  into  that  great 
fellowship.  I  have  spoken  of  her  actual 
power  today  in  the  social  perplexities  of  to- 
day, and  I  feel  more  and  more  the  need  of  a 
\  society  that  has  an  other-worldly  reference, 
whose  very  existence  is  a  protest  against 
materialist  ideals.  I  have  spoken  of  the 
appeal  to  the  individual,  his  power  to  find 
himself  in  the  Church.  This  individual 
reference  must  never  be  left  out,  the  mys- 
tic is  the  deepest  of  all  apologists;  and  no 
social  authority  can  do  away  with  the  sense 


SIGN  231 

of  the  individual  member.  But  all  these 
things  have  for  the  Christian  no  meaning 
apart  from  Him  from  whom  they  took  their 
origin.  Neither  the  history,  nor  the  pres- 
ent life  of  the  Church,  nor  her  Sacraments, 
nor  the  individual's  consciousness  of  grace 
could  stand  for  one  moment,  but  for  their 
reference  to  Him.  It  is  in  Him,  as  He  hangs 
upon  the  Cross,  "the  dear  dying  Lamb" 
in  whom  we  see  the  human  face  of  God. 
He  calls  all  men  unto  Him,  lifted  on  that 
tree  of  agony,  which  is  His  enduring  throne. 
The  quest  of  any  man  is  the  quest  of 
reahty.  It  may  be  more  vigorous  and 
conscious  at  such  times  as  this  at  college, 
but  it  never  ceases.  Man  is  so  made  that 
he  cannot  be  satisfied  with  less  than  the 
highest,  and  that  he  must  be  beaten  down 
before  he  can  be  raised  up.  The  pursuit 
of  seK  cannot  be  carried  on  alone;  it  is  self, 
as  at  home  in  God,  that  we  seek.  We  find 
ourselves  only  in  finding  Him.  There  in 
Him  who  bade  men  die  to  five  is  the  crown 
of  all  our  striving;  there  is  the  Love  that 
redeems  our  tragic  failure,  the  peace  that 
passeth  all  understanding — Jesus  Christ,  the 
same  yesterday,  today,  and  for  ever. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 


King  Richard  the  Third  and  the  Reverend 
James  Thompson 

Some  fifteen  years  ago  Sir  Clements  Markham 
set  himself  to  rehabilitate  Richard  Crookback. 
His  effort  was  not  the  first,  for  Horace  Walpole  a 
century  before  had  tried  his  hand  at  the  same  task. 
The  work  was  done  so  skilfully  that  any  member 
of  the  general  public  who  had  suflScient  interest  to 
read  the  articles  would  easily  have  succumbed  to 
the  advocate.  Briefly,  the  case  was  as  follows. 
The  writers  who  have  made  history  were  all  of  them 
directly  or  indirectly  subservient  to  Henry  VII, 
who  needed  for  his  stability  to  inculcate  detesta- 
tion of  the  man  whom  he  had  supplanted.  This 
bias  animated  historical  writers  consciously  and 
popular  opinion  unconsciously.  For  reasons  of 
this  sort  Fabyan  is  worthless.  Polydore  Vergil, 
historiographer  to  Henry  VII,  was  an  Italian  and 
was  not  likely  to  tell  any  truth  unpalatable  to  his 
master  even  if  he  had  known.  The  life  of  Richard 
by  Sir  Thomas  More  has  not  really  the  weight  of 
his  character  behind,  but  was  written  or  inspired 

235 


2S6  APPENDIX 

by  Cardinal  Morton,  the  engineer  of  the  Tudor 
triumph,  and  implacably  hostile  to  Richard. 

After  thus  clearing  the  ground  by  destroying 
the  credit  of  the  witnesses,  the  critic  examined 
the  individual  crimes  attributed  to  Richard.  He 
laboured  the  inadequacy  of  the  evidence  for  the 
Duke's  share  in  the  murder  of  the  young  Prince  of 
Wales  after  Tewkesbury.  For  his  supposed  mur- 
der of  King  Henry  VI  in  the  Tower,  the  course 
advised  by  Mr.  Weller  was  adopted  and  an  alibi 
set  up.  The  story  of  the  killing  of  "false,  fleeting, 
perjured  Clarence'*  was  dismissed  as  unworthy  of 
credence. 

After  this  preliminary  exculpation  the  accused 
is  led  into  court  with  clean  hands  and  there  tried 
for  his  final  and  worst  offences,  the  usurpation  of 
the  Crown  and  the  subsequent  murder  in  the  Tower 
of  the  two  princes.  So  far  from  being  an  educated 
Renaissance  villain,  Richard  is  shewn  as  a  rather 
nice  man,  capable  like  others  of  crimes,  but  averse 
from  them.  The  whole  moral  atmosphere  of  that 
time 

"  Which  hovered  between  war  and  wantonness 
And  crownings  and  dethronements." 

is  conveniently  ignored  throughout  the  discussion. 
The  plea  set  up  for  the  assumption  of  the  Crown 
is  reviewed.  It  is  alleged  that  Richard  was  no 
usurper,  but  the  true  heir.  He  was  shocked  to  find 
from  Bishop  Stillington  the  evidence  of  an  earlier 
maiTiage  of  his  brother,  which  reduced  the  little 
princes  into  bastards.    Thus  Richard  was  not  the 


APPENDIX  237 

wicked  uncle,  but  the  lawful  inheritor;  i.e.,  if 
Warwick  was  held  to  be  barred  by  his  father 
Clarence's  attainder. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Not  only  did  Richard  not 
usurp  the  throne.  He  did  not  even  make  away  with 
his  nephews.  He  left  them  aHve.  They  were  mur- 
dered by  Henry  VII,  or  at  least  at  his  orders.  For 
it  was  his  interest  to  marry  the  daughter  of  Eliza- 
beth Woodville,  and  as  this  left  the  legitimacy  of 
the  princes  once  more  clear,  it  was  needful  to  get 
rid  of  them.  Now  the  character  of  that  rather 
unattractive  Machiavellian  statesman  is  not  such 
as  to  make  the  story  hard  of  belief.  We  should 
have  no  diflSculty  about  it  if  there  were  any  tradition 
or  writing  in  its  favour.  Moreover,  it  is  noteworthy 
that  the  Act  of  Attainder  passed  against  Richard 
does  not  mention  this  assassination,  and  this  is  not 
very  easily  accounted  for,  except  by  the  hypothesis 
that  the  Httle  princes  were  still  alive  at  the  moment 
the  act  was  passed.  Against  all  this  there  is,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  evidence  of  popular  tradition  and 
all  our  writers,  and  on  the  other  the  testimony  of 
one  witness  who  must  have  been  disinterested. 
The  French  Chancellor,  at  the  States-General  in 
1484,  with  Richard  still  reigning,  openly  denounced 
him  as  the  murderer  of  his  nephews  and  assumed 
the  widespread  knowledge  of  the  fact.  This  diflS- 
culty was  removed  by  Mr.  Markham  in  the  follow- 
ing way.  He  pointed  out  that  Morton  was  peculiarly 
active  in  France  and  suggested  that  he  had  inspired 
the  Chancellor,  not  only  with  the  behef  that  Richard 


APPENDIX 

had  murdered  the  children,  but  also  with  the  belief 
that  there  was  in  England  a  common  rumour  to 
that  effect,  whereas,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  was 
nothing  of  the  sort. 

Despite  the  ingenuity  of  this  argument  —  and 
it  is  far  more  plausible  than  much  of  the  critical 
constructions  of  a  non-miraculous  Gospel  —  it  has 
failed  to  win  acceptance.  Dr.  Gairdner,  whose 
knowledge  of  the  sources  was  unrivalled,  not  only 
refused  to  be  persuaded,  but  declared  that  such 
methods  as  those  employed  were  "an  end  of  all 
history."  So  far  as  I  am  aware,  no  single  historical 
student  has  declared  in  favour  of  the  new  theory. 

The  controversy  is,  however,  of  great  interest, 
for  it  raises  the  whole  question  of  normal  historical 
beliefs.  Further,  it  serves  to  illustrate  how  woe- 
fully we  may  go  astray  if  we  isolate  each  document 
or  fact  and  consider  them  apart  from  the  total 
picture  and  from  popular  tradition.  For  indeed 
it  is  a  strange  chance,  if  Richard  had  been  the 
"plaister-saint"  he  becomes  on  the  new  theory, 
how  all  evidence  of  such  a  character  should  have 
vanished.  It  is  also  to  be  noted  that  this  whole 
series  of  crimes  was  attributed,  not  to  different 
people,  but  to  the  same  individual,  placed  amid 
alluring  temptations  and  living  in  an  age  when 
bloodshed  was  a  daily  occurrence  and  the  influence 
of  the  later  Renaissance  was  operating  to  under- 
mine the  moral  basis  of  society.  In  the  time  of 
such  flowers  of  the  moral  life  as  Tiptoft  or  Rodrigo 
Borgia,  such  deeds  are  far  from  incredible  for  a 


APPENDIX  239 

prince  in  a  position  which  has  proved  too  strong 
for  many  a  more  virtuous  character.  Nor  can  we 
account  for  all  these  crimes  as  the  creation  of  prej- 
udice or  ill-feeling,  even  though  it  may  be  that  one 
or  two  of  the  narratives  have  undergone  appro- 
priate development;  nor  is  it  really  an  argument 
against  the  traditional  story  that  it  formed  the 
basis  of  a  play  of  Shakespeare.  The  real  diflBculty 
lies  in  the  total  impression  and  the  universal  tradi- 
tion. Of  course  all  this  might  be  the  fruit  of  Tudor 
calumny;  at  least  the  contrary  must  be  proved. 
But  to  a  mind  not  resolved  a  priori  to  discard  the 
common  tradition  such  an  explanation  seems  too 
far  fetched  to  be  probable.  Thus  it  can  be  seen 
how,  even  in  a  case  like  this,  any  sound  historical 
judgment  must  take  into  account  not  only  the 
documents,  but  also  the  common  tradition,  while 
it  must  treat  not  merely  of  the  facts  in  isolation, 
but  the  total  picture,  of  which  they  are  elements. 

The  same  is  the  case  with  other  characters,  such 
as  the  Emperor  Tiberius  or  Pope  Alexander  VI. 
Efforts  have  been  made  to  destroy  the  belief  in  the 
trustworthiness  of  the  traditional  view,  but  with- 
out any  real  success,  and  with  slight  changes  in 
detail  the  portrait  remains  as  it  was. 

Further,  it  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  even  in 
regard  to  the  most  thoroughly  "documented"  of 
historical  facts  tradition  plays  a  large  part  in  our 
belief.  Creighton  said  somewhere  that  apart  from 
tradition  there  was  not  suflBcient  evidence  to  prove 
that  Julius  Csesar  ever  lived,  and  the  same  fact  is 


mo  APPENDIX 

proved  indirectly  by  the  famous  theory  of  Huet 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  In  the  interests  of 
the  Papacy,  Huet  argued  that  there  never  had  taken 
place  any  Councils  before  that  of  Trent;  i.e.,  that 
the  whole  of  Church  history  was  a  fiction.  In  our 
own  day  the  same  was  contended  from  an  opposite 
standpoint  by  the  late  Mr.  Johnson.  He  held 
that  the  whole  of  history  from  500  to  1500  was 
imaginary,  the  deliberate  creation  of  the  monastic 
orders,  and  to  get  over  certain  obvious  difficulties 
he  presumed  that,  where  there  was  other  than 
Christian  authority,  that  was  due  to  a  similar 
fiction  on  the  part  of  Mohammedan  monks.  I  quote 
these  cases,  not  for  any  value  in  the  theories,  but 
as  proof  of  the  difficulties  that  face  any  enquirer 
who  is  resolved  to  jettison  tradition  from  all  his- 
torical beliefs. 

II 

This  is  the  first  impression  made  upon  the  reader 
by  Mr.  Thompson's  book  on  Miracles  in  the  New 
Testament}  The  age-long  faith  of  Christendom 
goes  for  nothing.  In  his  view  the  consciousness 
of  the  Church  creates  not  even  a  presumption  in 
favour  of  any  single  interpretation  —  indeed  the 
presumption  is  rather  the  other  way.  Now  it 
might  not  be  accurate  to  say  that,  critically  speak- 
ing, the  Church  tradition  affords  more  than  a  pre- 
sumption. But  that  it  affords  less  is  not  so  much  a 
surrender  of  any  conception  of  Divine  guidance  in 
the  religious  society,  but  it  is  false  to  the  first 


APPENDIX  241 

principles  of  forming  the  most  ordinary  historical 
judgments.     In  starting  to  write  a  life  of  Bossuet, 
for  instance,  I  cannot  divest  myself  of  those  impres- 
sions about  the  grand  siecle  that  have  Kved  them- 
selves into  the  mind  of  cultivated  Europe  and  ha\'e 
been  slowly  infusing  their  meaning  into  me  since 
the  days  when  I  read  Voltaire's  history  before  I 
went  to  a  pubUc   school.      I  approach  the  topic 
through  a  whole  worid  of  presuppositions,  senti- 
ments, and  imaginings,  which  have  built  themselves 
into  a  picture  with  very  httle  of  conscious  con- 
struction on  my  part.     True,  when  the  evidence 
is  mastered,  in  some  respects  the  current  tradition 
will  be  modified  and  my  appreciation  of  its  mean- 
ing will  be  deeper.     But  tradition  is  rarely  at  fault 
in  regard  to  the  main  Hneaments  of  any  character 
who  held  the  stage,  and  it  ought  always  to  be  taken 
into  account  even  by  a  writer  who  desires  to  set 
up  a  diflFerent   view.    As   a   matter  of   fact   the 
vast   development    of    historical    investigation    in 
the  nineteenth  century  has  not  greatly  altered  our 
judgments,  though  it  has  deepened  our  knowledge 
and  modified  it  in  detail,  in  regard  to  any  of  the 
great  public  men.    Henry  VIII,  Queen  Elizabeth, 
Charies  I  and  his  sons,  Mariborough,  Joseph  II, 
RicheHeu,  Frederic  the  Great,  Maria  Teresa  do  not 
loom  so  very  differently  to  us  from  what  they  did 
to    our    grandfathers,    however    greatly    we    have 
deepened  our  acquaintance  with   the   social   and 
political  conditions  of  their  life. 
However  that  may  be,  no  historian  ought  to 
17 


242  APPENDIX 

approacli  the  study  of  any  well  known  historical 
personage  without  taking  into  account  the  tradi- 
tional portrait  and  treating  it  as  at  least  having  a 
very  strong  presumption  in  its  favour.  Or  else  how 
did  it  arise?  For  this  is  where  he  begins.  He 
starts  from  that  notion  of  the  character  which  has 
become  universal,  which  is  impressed  upon  the 
mind  rather  by  suggestion  and  feeling  than  by  direct 
statement  and  is  a  presupposition  of  the  very  motive 
which  drives  him  to  criticise. 

Now  in  regard  to  the  miracles,  and  still  more  in 
regard  to  those  of  them  enshrined  in  the  Creeds, 
the  tradition  of  the  Christian  Church  affords  at 
least  as  valuable  a  help  as  does  the  popular  judg- 
ment of  a  king  or  a  soldier.  Yet  from  Mr.  Thomp- 
son's book  one  would  scarcely  know  that  it  existed, 
and  might  almost  suppose  that  these  narratives 
were  some  newly  constructed  hypotheses  which  a 
revolutionary  school  of  theologians  were  trying  to 
bolster  up  by  a  non-natural  use  of  the  documents. 
I  do  not  say  that  the  consciousness  of  the  Church 
in  a  matter  of  this  kind  is  infallible;  certainly  it 
cannot  be  assumed  to  be  so  beforehand.  But  I 
do  say,  as  Professor  Denney  said,  that  the  very 
institution  of  Sunday  is  a  standing  evidence,  too 
frequently  ignored,  of  the  fact  that  the  Church 
is  built  upon  the  faith  that  on  the  first  day  of 
the  week  the  Lord  rose  again  leaving  an  empty 
grave. 

The  question  of  our  Lord's  miracles  cannot  be 
decided  by  discussing  them  in  isolation.    First  of 


APPENDIX  243 

all  we  must  have  some  view  of  the  narrative  as  a 
whole.  Now  Mr.  Thompson  does  not  profess  to 
do  this,  although,  as  I  shall  indicate,  he  really  does 
write  with  his  mind  made  up  as  to  what  cannot 
have  happened.  At  any  rate  he  never  discusses 
the  problem  about  the  total  character  of  the  im- 
pression made  upon  us  by  the  documents  — 
whether  it  does  not  present  us  with  features  that 
are  supernatural.  As  I  have  urged  in  the  text, 
the  total  massive  impression  of  the  New  Testament 
narratives  seems  to  me  so  strong  and  so  wonderful 
that,  unless  I  were  hindered  by  irresistible  prejudice, 
I  should  say  that  we  have  here  to  do  with  events 
in  a  high  degree  mysterious,  with  what  has  all  the 
marks  of  an  irruption  of  influences  from  the  spirit- 
world  into  that  of  sense,  producing,  as  might  well 
be  anticipated,  amazing  disturbances.  For  if  there 
be  a  spirit-world  behind  this  and  it  has  relations 
with  ours  —  if  even  what  Mr.  Thompson  somewhat 
inconsistently  admits  be  true,  then  that  these 
results  of  such  a  unique  fact  should  be  strange, 
abnormal,  miraculous  is  only  natural. 

I  beUeve  that  this  conclusion  can  be  sustained 
even  if  we  take  the  Synoptics  alone,  or  S.  John,  or 
the  Epistles  of  S.  Paul;  though  on  the  grounds 
stated  I  do  not  believe  that  this  separation  is  legiti- 
mate, or  even  that  we  have  any  real  right  to  separate 
the  evidence  of  the  New  Testament  from  the  con- 
tinuing hfe  of  the  Church  and  its  power  today  in 
the  individual  experience.  For  we  must  bear  in 
mind   that    one   well-attested    conversion    or  one 


244  APPENDIX 

specifically  Christianised  life  outweighs  as  positive 
evidence  the  existence  of  a  thousand  unbelievers  or 
Pagans,  precisely  as  one  well-authenticated  ghost 
story  is  positive  evidence  about  a  spirit-world, 
which  would  not  be  destroyed  by  proving  a  hundred 
other  stories  to  be  figments.  Speaking  as  one  who 
has  been  concerned  in  historical  studies  for  more 
than  twenty  years,  I  say  that  it  would  take  a  great 
deal  more  argument  than  any  I  have  yet  come 
across  to  convince  me  of  the  untruth  of  the  general 
character  of  the  New  Testament.  The  impression, 
which  deepens  on  every  reading,  is  quite  plain  — 
like  a  flash  of  light  —  that  I  hold  here  the  record 
of  a  spiritual  experience  which  speaks  from  the 
world  beyond  and  has  produced  profound  and 
unusual  disturbance  in  the  physical  universe. 
This  seems  to  my  apprehension  the  plain  fact;  a 
fact  made  more  patent  by  its  after-results  and  to  be 
accepted,  like  other  facts,  whatever  general  scheme 
of  notions  a  man  adheres  to.  It  matters  not  for 
this  purpose  whether  a  man  be  idealist,  realist, 
sceptic,  intellectualist,  pragmatist,  here  he  has  to 
do  with  a  genuine  outbreak  from  the  world  beyond, 
and  he  must  harmonise  the  fact  of  that  outbreak 
with  his  system  or  change  it  as  best  he  may. 

Personally  it  seems  to  me  that  the  Creeds  and 
the  Church  are  but  the  expression  of  that  fact,  are 
indeed  part  of  it,  and  on  grounds  stated  above,  it 
is  the  whole  fact  that  is  the  real  living  thing;  the 
details  are  but  abstractions,  and  it  is  to  that  whole 
fact,  as  the  expression  of  "God  in  Christ  reconcil- 


APPENDIX  245 

ing  the  world  unto  Himself,"  that  my  adhesion  is 
given  and  by  which  I  obtain  "the  fellowship  of 
the  mystery.'* 

Ill 

Let  us,  however,  pass  from  this  topic  and  con- 
sider the  treatment  which  Mr.  Thompson  gives  to 
the  documents,  how  the  first  and  most  notable 
feature  of  his  treatment  is  that  he  nowhere  gives 
any  serious  reflection  to  the  total  impression  created 
by  the  documents  as  a  whole.  We  shall  never  get 
a  true  view  either  of  a  character,  an  epoch,  or  a 
book  if  we  seek  first  for  the  details  and,  adding  up 
our  impressions,  produce  the  result  as  a  sort  of 
addition  sum.  Fancy  judging  a  Keats'  sonnet 
by  the  first  four  hues  or  Esmond  by  three 
chapters  taken  at  random.  It  is  the  whole  which 
makes  a  work  of  hfe  or  of  art.  On  that  we  must 
have  some  provisional  view  before  we  proceed  to 
analysis  of  details.  It  is  now  recognised  by  psy- 
chologists that  this  is  the  way  in  which  the  mind 
works;  it  starts  from  a  vaguely  defined  continuum 
and  proceeds  to  split  it  up  into  objects.  So  we  have 
to  do  with  our  historical  judgments  as  with  our 
literary.  First  of  all  we  must  frame  for  ourselves 
some  general  impression  as  to  the  man,  the  epoch, 
or  the  book  with  which  we  are  dealing,  and  then 
proceed  to  deepen,  to  correct,  and  to  define  this 
impression  more  precisely  by  a  closer  study  of 
detail.  The  whole  comes  before  the  parts  in  this 
as  in  any  living  thing. 


246  APPENDIX 

Here  it  is  the  total  fact  that  has  the  character 
of  miracle.  It  is  there  that  we  obtain  that  irresist- 
ible impression  of  witnessing  an  invasion  of  this 
world  by  powers  from  that  beyond  —  a  view  which 
is  only  inadmissible  provided  the  world  as  we  see 
it  be  self-explanatory  and  complete.  If  this  be  not 
so,  we  cannot  rule  out  beforehand  the  supernatural 
character  of  the  Christian  fact,  and  it  is  as  parts 
of  this  alleged  supernatural  fact  that  the  miracles 
are  to  be  considered.  They  are  not  single  and  un- 
related marvels,  and  yet  that  is  the  way  in  which 
criticism  of  this  sort  habitually  treats  them. 

Let  us  take  two  instances  of  this  unbiassed 
criticism.  The  narratives  of  the  first  two  chapters 
of  S.  Luke  are  well  known,  and  their  internal  soli- 
darity is  the  most  obvious  feature.  Mr.  Thompson, 
however,  will  have  none  of  this,  and  following  Prof. 
Kirsopp  Lake,  endeavours,  by  splitting  them  into 
pieces,  to  shew  that  the  story  of  the  miraculous 
birth  forms  no  integral  part.  It  is  a  later  addition. 
There  is  no  ground  in  the  MSS.  for  this  assertion, 
and  hence  its  sole  support  is  the  prepossession  of 
the  writer  against  any  abnormal  occurrence.  I  quote 
his  words: 

"But  probably  the  best  solution  of  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  passage  is  to  suppose  that  the  four 
words  cTTct  avSpa  ov  ytyvtoo-Kw,  without  which  there 
would  be  no  obscurity  and  no  suggestion  of 
the  Virgin  Birth  in  the  Gospel,  are  either  a  modi- 
fication of  S.  Luke's  source,  introduced  by  the 
Evangelist  himself,  as  editor,  or  a  later  addition 


APPENDIX  247 

to  the  text  of  Luke  by  some  person  or  congrega- 
tion who  wished  to  make  the  miracle  quite  clear. 
There  is  no  textual  authority  for  doubting  the 
words.  But  we  know  that  editorial  modifications 
are  a  common  feature  of  the  Gospel.  And  we 
have  no  reason,  unfortimately,  to  suppose  that 
even  the  best  texts  which  we  possess  are  free  from 
interpolations."  ^ 

It  is  not  easy  to  treat  this  objection  seriously  — 
it  can  obviously  have  no  weight  at  all  save  to  a 
mind  resolved  beforehand  to  find  some  way  out  of 
the  clear  testimony  of  the  Gospel. 

One  more  instance  will  witness  to  the  sanity 
and  balance  of  this  criticism.  The  narrative  of 
the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand  occurs  in  all  four 
Gospels.  If  the  writer's  view  be  sound  that  the 
miracle  of  the  four  thousand  is  only  a  variant,  this 
only  proves  how  widespread  was  the  story.  Clearly, 
it  formed  part  of  the  very  earliest  tradition.  Nor 
can  it  be  dismissed  by  a  manipulation  of  the  MSS. 
The  author,  however,  finds  no  diflSculty.  Following 
M.  Loisy  he  pronounces  it  to  be  a  Eucharistic 
myth.     It  had  better  be  given  in  his  own  words. 

"But  probably  the  most  valuable  clue  to  the 
meaning  of  the  narrative  is  supplied  by  the  institu- 
tion of  the  Eucharist  in  the  Early  Church.  Sup- 
pose an  original  incident,  the  exact  nature  of  which 
we  cannot  now  determine,  but  which  must  have 
been  remarkable  enough  to  impress  itself  upon  the 
memory  of  the  apostles,  to  be  compared  with  the 
stories  of  the  Old  Testament  prophets   (I  Kings 


248  APPENDIX 

xvii.  8-16;  2  Kings  iv.  42-44),  and  to  be  regarded 
at  a  comparatively  early  date  as  a  miracle.  This 
incident  may  have  been  transformed,  by  the  pious 
imagination  of  a  later  generation,  into  the  original 
institution  of  the  Agape  and  Eucharist.  Then  the 
account  of  it  would  be  assimilated  to  the  actual 
experience  of  Christian  worship.  At  the  Eucharist, 
which  might  sometimes  be  held  out  of  doors,  and 
at  which  the  congregation  would  naturally  be 
arranged  in  groups,  Jesus  Himself  was  still 
present  among  His  friends;  still,  as  Head  of  the 
Family  of  the  faithful,  blessed  and  brake  the 
bread;  still  miraculously  satisfied  the  utmost  needs 
of  all  who  came.  Further,  it  was  natural  to  think 
that,  if  He  had  performed  this  symbolic  act  once 
in  Jewish  territory.  He  must  have  done  it  again 
among  the  Gentiles;  and  thus  the  alternative 
tradition  of  the  Feeding  of  the  Four  Thousand 
found  ready  admission  to  the  Gospel.^ 

"It  is  difficult  to  see  why,  unless  there  was  some 
such  ecclesiastical  motive  for  its  preservation,  the 
story  of  this  miracle  should  have  appeared  six  times 
in  the  Gospels,  and  always  with  such  an  amount 
of  detail.  The  fact  that  it  is  so  often  described  is 
not  a  sign  that  the  Evangelists  were  particularly 
sure  that  it  happened,  but  rather  that  it  was  par- 
ticularly appropriate  to  the  needs  of  those  for 
whom  they  wrote.'* 

Further  argument  is  hardly  needed  with  expla- 
nations like  this  ready  to  hand.  It  would  be 
equally    feasible    to    interpret    the    whole    Gospel 


APPENDIX  249 

narrative,  in  the  method  once  fashionable,  as  a 
sun-myth.  For  no  conceivable  phenomenon,  how- 
ever unusual,  but  might  be  trinmied  into  normal 
categories  by  methods  so  drastic  and  subjective. 
Of  course  this  exegesis  can  have  no  weight  except 
for  those  who  are  resolved  beforehand  to  reject  all 
that  is  abnormal. 

That  is  indeed  the  spirit  of  the  book.  True  it 
is  that  the  writer  refrains  from  denying  the  abstract 
possibiHty  of  miracles,  but  this  exception  is  purely 
verbal.  On  page  5  we  find  him  saying  "To  admit 
a  miracle  is  to  commit  intellectual  suicide."  When 
an  academic  ■WTiter  begins  an  unbiassed  enquiry 
with  a  dictum  of  that  kind,  we  can  predict  pretty 
readily  what  conclusions  he  will  come  to.  More 
significant  even  than  this  statement  is  the  remark 
in  the  course  of  his  reply  in  The  Guardian  that  "the 
amount  of  evidence  which  exists  for  miracles  is 
itself  the  proof  that  they  never  happened."  To 
argue  with  a  writer  who  takes  up  a  position  like  this 
is  obviously  out  of  the  question.  It  is  a  case  of 
heads  I  win,  tails  you  lose.  If  the  evidence  is  slight 
or  a  httle  confused  we  are  to  withhold  our  belief 
because  there  is  too  little;  if  it  be  incontrovertible 
we  are  still  to  withhold  it  because  there  is  too 
much.  This  truly  amazing  sentence  is  a  redudio 
ad  absurdum  of  his  whole  argument.^  That  argu- 
ment, however,  with  the  discussion  which  it  has 
aroused,  will  have  served  a  good  purpose  if  it 
avails  once  more  to  bring  out  the  well  known 
fact  that  the   question  of   the  abnormal    in  his- 


25d  APPENDIX 

tory  is  at  bottom  philosophical  or  theological  and 
can  never  be  decided  by  the  documents  alone. 
It  all  depends  on  the  attitude  of  mind  with  which 
you  approach  it.  One  would  have  thought  that 
all  this  had  been  suflSciently  established  by  the 
classical  work  on  Miracles  (ignored  by  Mr.  Thomp- 
son), Mozley's  Bampton  Lectures.  That  all  depends 
on  our  previous  attitude  is  demonstrated  over  and 
over  again  by  the  writer,  in  spite  of  himself,  in 
phrases  like  those  quoted,  and  others,  and  in  his 
preference  of  a  vast  quantity  of  ingenious  theories 
to  the  clear  meaning  of  the  New  Testament  and 
the  whole  tradition  of  the  Church.  And  indeed  it 
is  very  commonly  recognised  —  by  friend  and  foe 
alike.  A  friend  of  mine  once  said  to  me,  ^'It  is  not 
a  question  of  evidence,  it  is  a  question  of  taste,  and 
the  taste  for  miracle  has  gone  out.**  That  is  the 
modern  attitude.  Only  I  deny  the  statement. 
True  of  the  last  generation  it  is  less  and  less  true 
of  our  own.  Recent  knowledge  of  faith-healing, 
thought-transference,  and  the  well  established  cases 
of  "ecstatics"  and  "levitation'*  are  bringing  back 
once  more  that  habit  of  mind  which  can  approach 
strange  occurrences  without  ruling  them  out  before- 
hand by  some  appeal  to  laws  of  nature,  or  to  what 
is,  or  is  not,  conceivable.  Mr.  Thompson's  remarks 
about  the  "walking  on  the  water"  and  the  nature 
miracles  savour  rather  of  the  "brave  days"  of  Pro- 
fessor Tyndall  than  of  anything  we  have  now. 
Thus  it  appears  to  me  to  be  an  entire  mistake  when 
Mr.  Thompson  speaks  of  criticism  as  though  it 


APPENDIX  251 

were  a  purely  independent  science  and  could  estab- 
lish certain  conclusions  universally  acceptable. 
For  the  moment  you  pass  beyond  the  range  of 
the  normal,  everything  depends  on  your  previous 
attitude  towards  the  supernatural.  According  as 
your  general  view  is  favourable  or  unfavourable  to 
it,  so  must  you  approach  the  evidence.  If  you  believe 
or  consider  it  probable  that  we  are  surrounded  by 
living  spirits  who  may  influence  this  world  and  know 
more  about  it  than  we  do,  you  cannot  fail  to  approach 
the  evidence  in  a  very  different  spirit  from  one  who 
beheves  such  powers  to  be  non-existent  or  so  highly 
improbable  as  to  be  practically  negligible.  This 
distinction  is  seen  daily  in  the  different  approach 
made  towards  ghost-stories,  and  I  suppose  by  some 
even  in  regard  to  thought-transference  or  mind- 
cure.  Does  anyone  suppose  that  Prof.  Ray  Lan- 
kester  and  Sir  Ohver  Lodge,  both  of  them  eminent 
scientific  enquirers,  would  be  hkely  to  agree  as  to 
the  results  of  a  dozen  meetings  of  the  Society  of 
Psychical  Research? 

So  in  regard  to  the  New  Testament.  Not  all, 
but  a  great  deal  of  our  view  will  depend  on  whether 
we  hold  a  belief  in  regard  to  the  other  world  akin 
to  that  of  S.  John  or  S.  Paul  or  whether  we  start 
by  ruling  out  of  court  with  M.  Seignobos  all  miracu- 
lous narratives  because  we  think  it  a  principle  of 
historical  criticism  that  "miracles  do  not  happen"! 
The  truth  is  that  any  hope  of  a  general  agreement 
in  regard  to  narratives  deahng  with  events  which  on 
the  face  of  them  are  supra-normal  is  a  chimera.    It 


252  APPENDIX 

is  as  littl-e  likely  to  be  realized  as  a  universal  theistic 
belief  based  on  the  alleged  irrefragable  proofs.  If 
they  are  intellectually  coercive,  how  is  it  that  so 
many  reflecting  persons  are  unconvinced  by  them? 
In  history,  as  in  philosophy  or  theology,  there 
is  no  likelihood  of  a  compulsive  certainty  based 
on  the  documents  alone  and  apart  from  faith. 
The  evidence  may  be  enough  to  confirm  a 
waverer  or  puzzle  a  doubter,  but  it  never  was 
and  never  will  be  enough  of  itself  to  convince  a 
determined  unbeliever  in  the  other  world,  and  by 
its  very  nature  it  cannot  be,  because  it  is  always 
possible  for  the  sceptic  to  say,  with  Hume,  that 
some  form  of  self-delusion  is  more  probable  than 
the  truth  of  the  narrative.^ 

Now  it  is  this  general  attitude  towards  the  other 
world  that  is  the  most  startling  feature  of  this  book. 
It  comes  out  most  clearly  in  the  writer's  attitude 
towards  the  Fourth  Gospel.  It  is  well  known  that 
even  some  Unitarian  scholars  hold  to  a  belief  in 
Christ,  as  the  Incarnate  Logos,  who  are  yet  unable 
to  accept  the  miracles.  But  of  this  Mr.  Thompson 
will  have  none.  He  complains  of  the  "intellectual 
inadequacy"  of  the  Gospel  and  lays  bare  his  feeling 
in  his  attitude  towards  the  prologue.  He  describes 
its  aim  correctly  enough,  but  only  to  reject  it. 

"The  fourth  Gospel  begins  with  a  supernatural- 
istic  account  of  the  Incarnation.  This  it  propounds 
in  the  prologue,  stating  (with  a  deliberate  parallel- 
ism of  expression  to  the  opening  of  the  Jewish  Bible) 
that  the  story  of  Jesus  is  the  story  of  the  entrance 


APPENDIX  253 

into  the  world  under  ordinary  conditions  of  space 
and  time  of  the  Eternal  Word  of  God.  Pre-existent 
with  God,  He  had  been  God's  agent  in  the  creation 
of  the  world,  which  now  He  visited  and  revivified, 
as  the  Source  of  all  spiritual  life  and  light."  A 
little  further  on  he  adds:  "To  sum  up,  the  aim  of 
the  fourth  Gospel  is  to  place  the  timeless,  spaceless 
person  of  the  Word  of  God  into  the  narrow  condi- 
tions of  time  and  place  in  which  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
lived  and  died.  This  can  be  done  in  faith  without 
damage  to  either  side  of  the  antinomy.  It  cannot 
be  done  in  history  without  a  weakening  either  of 
the  humanity  or  of  the  divinity  of  Christ." 

Thus,  in  Mr.  Thompson's  view,  the  whole  doc- 
trine of  the  Logos  and  any  belief  in  the  pre-existence 
of  our  Lord  is  a  product  of  superstition.  Thus  he 
throws  over  with  one  wave  of  the  hand  the  view  of 
one  who  understood  the  Gospel  if  any  man  ever  did 
(Bishop  Westcott)  "The  Unchangeable  sum  of 
Christianity  is  the  message"  —  "The  Word  was  God 
and  the  Word  became  flesh,"  while  it  would  reduce 
to  ruins  the  greater  part  of  the  confession  of  the 
other  great  critic.  Dr.  Hort,  as  expressed  in  his 
famous  Hulsean  Lectures  on  The  Way^  the  Truthy 
and  the  Life.  It  is  not  easy  to  see  what  remains 
of  the  theology  of  the  Incarnation  if  this  view 
be  accepted,  although  it  must  be  allowed  that 
at  the  close  certain  phrases  not  very  consistent 
with  the  writer's  main  position  are  introduced 
implying  that  our  Lord  as  the  perfect  result 
of  evolution  is  to  be  worshipped  as  God.     This 


254  APPENDIX 

point  is  of  importance  because  in  moat  of  the 
discussion  the  significance  of  this  part  of  the 
work  seems  to  have  been  overlooked.  Certainly 
it  shews  that  the  writer  is  far  more  at  variance 
with  Christian  theology  than  some  of  his  defenders 
have  claimed. 

Here  in  similar  passages  the  true  drift  of  the  book 
is  revealed.  It  is  the  total  mentality  of  the  writer, 
so  far  as  it  can  be  judged,  that  is  far  more  repugnant 
to  me  than  any  of  his  treatment  of  details.  Except 
in  the  form  of  a  Pantheistic  Nature-worship,  I  see 
no  real  loophole  for  any  belief  in  a  supernatural 
world.  ^ 

IV 

As  I  have  said  in  the  text,  the  question  of  miracles 
is  really  the  question  of  the  existence  of  a  transcen- 
dent world.  Does  there  exist  behind  the  veil  a 
Being  or  beings  of  spiritual  nature  with  knowledge 
and  powers  more  than  human  and  able  to  influence 
our  life  in  the  world  of  sense?  To  deny  this  exist- 
ence is  to  surrender  the  last  vestige  of  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  the  other  world.  Yet  if  such  beings 
have  any  relation  at  all  with  this  life  they  must 
somehow  or  other  cause  that  to  happen  which 
otherwise  would  not;  and  vice  versa.  When  such 
events  are  normal  in  character  we  caU  them  special 
providences.  When  they  are  not  we  call  them 
miracles.  In  Balzac's  story  La  Peau  de  Chagrin 
both  are  illustrated.  When  the  hero's  wishes  are 
granted,  so  far  as  I  recollect  the  form  is  never 


APPENDIX  255 

miraculous.  The  result  occurs  by  the  providential 
ordering  of  normal  occurrences.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  shrinkage  of  the  leather,  which  takes  place 
instantaneously  with  each  new  use  of  his  power, 
is  definitely  miraculous.  It  occurs  as  the  direct 
result  of  his  words  without  any  intermediary.  Now 
to  suppose  that  there  is  beyond  us  a  spiritual  world, 
and  that  it  either  has  no  relation  to  this,  or  that  it 
produces  no  effects  other  than  normal,  must  be 
either  to  deny  its  character  as  free  and  personal  or 
else  to  lay  down  that  neither  in  knowledge  nor 
power  can  it  exceed  ourselves.  But  it  may  produce 
effects  of  this  kind;  all  recorded  and,  I  think,  all 
conceivable  miracles  could  be  brought  under  this 
category.  I  refuse  to  make  the  truly  tremendous 
assumption  that  they  never  happen  and  never  have 
happened  —  even  apart  from  any  of  the  stories 
that  they  actually  did  happen. 

The  current  dishke  to  the  miraculous  is  due  to 
the  marvellous  triumphs  of  the  mechanical  method 
and  to  the  faith  that  it  is  the  sole  means  of 
knowledge.  It  is  frequently  due  to  a  subtle  form 
of  materialism  which,  by  asserting  the  supernatural 
significance  of  this  world,  conceives  that  it  has 
saved  the  spiritual  sense,  whereas  it  has  merely 
deified  Nature.  The  whole  point  of  our  per- 
plexities is  not  whether  or  no  this  life  may  have 
a  spiritual  meaning,  but  whether  it  contains  any 
freedom  or  all  is  determined;  and  secondly 
whether  this  face  of  things  we  see,  commonly 
called  the  natural  world,  is  the  whole  of  being, 


256  APPENDIX 

or  whether  it  be  but  a  little  bit  and  is  sur- 
rounded by  a  vaster  invisible  universe  peopled 
with  personal  spirits  and  functioning  in  ways 
different  to  ours. 

Christianity  stands  for  the  latter  view  and  always 
has  stood  for  it,  and  when  it  be  once  admitted  there 
is  no  real  difficulty  in  regard  to  miracle.  Of  course, 
if  we  take  Nature  in  the  sense  of  Huxley  or  Mill, 
as  equivalent  to  all  that  happens,  then  miracles  are 
as  natural  as  sparrows  (both  alike  being  mysterious). 
No  one  supposes  that  a  miracle  is  contrary  to  the 
nature  of  things,  and  part  of  the  ground  for  crediting 
them  is  that  they  are  congruous  with  a  God  who 
created  man  and  nature.  The  same  is  the  case 
with  the  rather  wearisome  controversy  about  law. 
Miracles  are  not  contrary  to  the  law  of  the  universe 
—  it  is  unthinkable;  they  may  be  regarded  as 
instances  of  a  higher  kind  of  life  with  its  laws  super- 
vening upon  a  lower,  just  as  man's  free  action  by 
the  law — i.e.,  the  order — of  his  being  can  stop 
a  cricket  ball  and  "interfere"'''  with  the  results  of 
gravitation.  What  we  have  experience  of  is  the 
different  kinds  of  nature,  the  mechanical,  then  the 
organic,  the  free  activity  of  man,  and  finally  there 
are  rarely  recognised  occurrences  which  indicate 
beings  of  a  higher  order. 

There  is  thus  no  objection  to  speak  of  miracles 
as  instances  of  a  higher  result.  Personally  I  am 
disposed  to  think  the  whole  use  of  the  term  law  is 
misleading,  but  there  is  not  the  smallest  ground 
for  any  believer  in  miracles  refusing   to   use   the 


APPENDIX  257 

term  if  he  prefers  it.  Every  fact  that  happens  is 
to  some  extent  new  and  individual,  and  a  miracle 
is  but  an  extreme  instance  of  this.  On  the  other 
hand,  every  fact  that  happens  takes  its  place  in  a 
series  —  it  is  a  bit  of  that  great  order  of  the  world. 
The  question  is  whether  that  order  is  personal  or 
mechanical,  for  as  M.  Bergson  so  admirably  shews, 
the  idea  of  mere  non-order  is  unthinkable;  the  only 
question  is  what  kind  of  order  we  have  to  deal  with. 
If  the  ultimate  basis  of  all  order  be  a  God  who  is 
Love  —  i.e.,  who  is  personal  and  free  —  then  such 
events  as  the  Resurrection  are  in  the  highest  degree 
natural,  they  are  signs  of  that  Eternal  order;  while 
the  more  nearly  anything  approaches  to  the  purely 
mechanical,  the  more  partial  and  abstract  will  it 
be.  As  a  fact,  the  moment  you  come  to  real  life 
you  find  mathematics  gives  but  a  very  partial 
account  of  it,  and  of  the  most  apparently  mechanical 
facts,  tells  rather  the  tendency  than  the  actual  fact; 
for  in  Nature,  as  some  one  put  it,  we  never  find  that 
1  is  1,  and  that  is  the  assumption  of  logic  and 
mathematics.  On  this  point  I  may  refer  to  the 
work  quoted  in  the  text.  Dr.  Karl  Pearson's  Gram- 
mar of  Science. 

The  contention  of  the  Christian  is  that  in  the 
last  resort  all  the  order  of  things  is  personal.  More- 
over, since  on  this  view  God  has  created  a  number 
of  free  beings  with  a  relative  independence,  there 
is  always  uncertainty  in  the  universe.  The  opposite 
view  is  that,  so  far  from  this  being  the  case,  one 
might  (theoretically)  and  may  by-and-bye  practi- 

18 


258  APPENDIX 

cally  be  able  to  predict  the  whole  future  of  the 
universe  both  in  gross  and  detail,  because  every- 
thing in  it  is  mutually  determined.  At  bottom  this 
view  denies  the  reality  of  change  and  freedom  and 
treats  the  world  as  dead,  i.e.,  given  once  for  all, 
and  working  out  a  formula  like  a  calculating  machine. 
Between  these  two  views  there  can  never  be  any- 
thing but  conflict,  and  the  various  attempts  to  soften 
determinism  can  none  of  them  be  pronounced 
successful.  It  is  the  cardinal  question  of  freedom 
wherein  lies  the  whole  problem. 

All  this  is  left  untouched  by  Mr.  Thompson, 
who  does  not  seem  to  have  ever  considered  the  bear- 
ing of  his  views  on  this  topic.  Others,  however, 
do  not  leave  it  here.  The  doctrine  of  special  provi- 
dences is  almost  more  repugnant  to  the  popular 
sentiment  even  than  that  of  miracles.  For  in  the 
nature  of  things  the  former  are  more  numerous 
and  less  unmistakable.  Still  more  is  this  the  case 
with  freedom.  Disbelievers  in  miracles  almost 
invariably  go  on,  as  they  logically  ought,  to  a  sheer 
determinism.  This  is  indeed  needful  if  they  want 
one  to  get  a  clearly  articulated  scheme  with  the 
state  of  the  world  at  any  one  moment  as  the 
mathematically  deducible  consequence  of  that  pre- 
ceding. It  is  because  it  conflicts  with  this  that 
freedom  is  discredited,  and  with  freedom,  of  course, 
the  miraculous.  That  the  two  are  bound  up  to- 
gether is  shewn  by  the  following  passage  from  Dr. 
McDougall's  new  book  on  Body  and  Mind.  Argu- 
ing from  a  scientific  standpoint  for  the  existence  of 


APPENDIX  259 

the  individual  soul,  he  puts  the  current  objection 
of  what  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  would  call  "the  orthodox 
man  of  science."    These  are  his  words: 

"Under  these  conditions  the  working  hypotheses 
of  the  natural  sciences  become  confidently  held 
doctrines  from  which  we  feel  ourselves  able  to 
deduce  the  limits  of  the  possible;  and  we  seem  able 
to  rule  out  from  our  scheme  of  the  universe  all  that 
confused  crowd  of  obscure  ideas  wliich,  under  the 
names  of  magic,  occultism,  and  mysticism,  have 
been  at  war  with  science  ever  since  it  began  to  take 
shape  as  a  system  of  verifiable  ideas  inductively 
established  on  an  empirical  basis.  Once  admit  on 
the  one  hand  that  psychical  influences  may  interfere 
with  the  course  of  physical  nature  and  **you  dont 
know  where  you  are";  you  no  longer  can  serenely 
affirm  that  miracles  do  not  happen.  They  may  happen 
at  any  moment  and  falsify  the  most  confident  predic- 
tions of  physical  science.'' 

This  book  deserves  to  be  widely  known.  It 
shews  what  are  the  living  tendencies  among  students 
of  natural  science.  At  least  some  of  the  acutest 
minds  are  seen  to  be  moving  away  (at  this  very 
moment,  when  Mr.  Thompson  develops  an  attack 
based  on  the  notions  of  the  last  generation)  from 
that  monism,  whether  materialist  or  spiritualist, 
to  which  all  events  are  mere  changes  in  the  one 
Being  and  miracles  or  new  happenings  and  free- 
dom or  the  existence  of  individuals  are  equally  out 
of  court.  His  work  illustrates  incidentally  to  the 
careful  reader  how  closely  connected  are  all  three 


260  APPENDIX 

notions:  belief  in  God  as  a  real  personal  agent,  i.e., 
in  a  transcendent  world;  belief  in  miracle,  i.e.,  in 
the  livingness  of  the  universe  (on  the  other  view 
it  is  merely  a  machine);  belief  in  the  true  individ- 
uality, i.e.,  the  soul  of  men  and  women.  The 
publication  of  this  book  is  a  remarkable  phenomenon. 
The  writer  has  (I  should  suppose)  no  bias  towards 
Christianity  and  he  approaches  the  subject  rather 
as  a  scientific  observer  than  as  a  philosopher  and 
shews  the  hopeless  inadequacy  of  the  popular 
doctrines  of  epiphenomenalism  or  psycho-physical 
parallelism  to  concatenate  the  actual  facts  of 
psychic  life. 


This  passage  of  Dr.  McDougall  suggests  one 
other  element  in  that  dislike  of  the  miraculous  which 
is  so  prevalent,  an  element  not  indiscernible  in 
certain  words  of  Mr.  Thompson  about  the  Sacra- 
ments and  involved  in  his  views  of  S.  John.  Miracles 
are  corrupting  to  religion,  for  they  imply  a  "magical" 
view  of  the  nature  of  God.  Now  so  far  as  I  can 
see,  this  widespread  objection  has  its  roots  in  that 
Gnostic  and  Manichsean  view  of  the  material 
universe  which  regards  it  as  something  evil,  and  is 
at  the  bottom  of  all  false  asceticism  and  much  of 
the  Puritan  view  of  hfe.  It  is  the  false  spiritualism 
which  flies  from  all  contact  with  the  outward  world, 
which  animates  the  Zwinglian  attack  on  Sacramental 
grace,  and  is  at  the  root  of  nearly  all  doctrines 
which  deny  the  Incarnation.     It  is  held  to  be  some- 


APPENDIX  261 

how  degrading  to  God  to  hold  that  the  regenera- 
tion of  man  should  proceed  partly  by  any  means 
dependent  on  the  outward  world.  Religion  is  in- 
wardness and  nothing  else,  and  every  material 
means  is  a  bar.  This  is  the  basis  of  Zwinglianism; 
it  is  seen  in  all  attempts  to  minimise  the  Incarna- 
tion, and  it  is  now  reaching  its  complete  expression 
in  the  dislike  and  contempt  for  miracle.  But  if  we 
look  this  difficulty  in  the  face,  we  can  at  once  see 
how  imreal  it  is  and  largely  dependent  for  its  force 
on  the  unpleasant  associations  which  many  people 
call  up  in  connection  with  the  word  "magic."  If 
we  are  a  world  of  spirits  surrounded  by  a  cloud  of 
invisible  witnesses,  also  spirits,  and  if  these  spirits 
act  on  this  world  at  all,  then  so  far  as  their  actions 
produce  results  in  the  world  of  sense,  they  must 
be  magical. 

Besides,  to  assert  the  contrary  is  to  deny  the 
sacredness  of  outward  things  and  to  suppose  that 
redemption  is  concerned  with  a  part,  not  with  the 
whole  of  life.  I  need  not  here  labour  the  point 
that  Christ  on  any  Christian  view  came  to  effect 
redemption  for  the  entire  being  of  man  —  body 
no  less  than  soul  and  spirit  —  and  that  it  is  a  false 
abstraction  to  leave  out  one  element.  As  Westcott 
says:  "The  Resurrection  teaches  not  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  but  the  immortality  of  the  man." 
Now  the  magical  view  of  the  Incarnation  asserts  no 
more  than  that  it  is  an  Incarnation,  the  entrance  into 
the  condition  of  human  life  of  the  Eternal  spirit; 
and  how  such  an  entrance  is  likely  to  be  devoid  of 


262  APPENDIX 

disturbances  in  the  material  order,  I  know  not. 
The  magical  view  of  the  Sacraments  merely  asserts 
that  God  communicates  Himself  to  us  by  the  con- 
secration of  the  simplest  means  of  common  life  and 
emphasizes  the  *'givenness"  of  grace  in  a  way  that 
none  of  the  subjective  theories  which  claim  a  higher 
spirituality  can  ever  succeed  in  doing.  The  magical 
view  of  the  world  involved  in  the  miraculous  is 
simply  the  assertion  that  this  life  is  not  all;  that  it 
is  encompassed  by  a  spirit  world  beyond,  and  that 
that  world  can  have  influence  over  this,  directly  and 
not  merely  indirectly.  How  any  believer  in  the  life 
beyond  can  deny  this,  I  cannot  understand. 


VI 

Finally  Mr.  Thompson  informs  us,  with  that 
confident  dogmatism  wliich  is  a  note  of  all  his  writ- 
ing, that  the  mental  conditions  in  which  miracles 
were  credible  have  vanished,  and  that  they  will  never 
return.  On  the  contrary,  so  far  as  I  can  judge, 
they  very  nearly  did  disappear  in  the  last  century, 
but  they  are  coming  back  now,  as  hard  as  they  can 
pelt.  On  all  sides  that  hard  crust  of  intellectualist 
orthodoxy  is  breaking  up.  The  mechanical  account 
of  Nature  is  more  and  more  seen  to  be  abstract  and 
partial.  We  see  on  every  hand  the  collapse  of  the 
heroic  efforts  to  force  on  to  the  Procrustean  bed  of 
purely  physical  and  mathematical  method  even  those 
branches  of  natural  science  which  are  concerned 
with  life;   while  the  attempt  to  stretch  human  life. 


APPENDIX  263 

still  more  art  and  religion  on  this  bed,  is  daily  ex- 
hibiting its  futility;  it  always  gives  a  plausible 
explanation,  but  it  does  so  by  omitting  the  one 
important  element  which  makes  the  difference.  It 
is  not  with  science,  but  with  the  mechanical 
theory  of  the  world,  that  the  belief  in  miracles 
conflicts  —  with  that  view  which,  treating  causa- 
tion as  the  category  of  identity  appHed  to  time, 
finds  nothing  in  the  effects  really  new,  and  by 
implication  denies  the  life  of  things,  the  reality 
of  change.  Prof.  J.  A.  Thompson,  whose  scienti- 
fic distinction  is  unquestioned,  asks.  Is  there 
one  science  of  Nature?  He  argues  that  the 
moment  you  come  to  the  problem  of  hfe,  you 
pass  beyond  any  possible  mechanical  explanation 
and  proceeds  to  quote  very  eminent  authorities 
on  his  side,  such  as  Dr.  J.  S.  Haldane,  Driesch,  and 
Joly. 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  whom  I  quote  in  the  text, 
affords  a  further  instance.  In  history  we  look  back 
with  a  smile  on  Buckle's  attempt  to  force  the  whole 
of  human  Hfe  into  a  formula  of  inevitable  develop- 
ment; and  sometime  back  a  protest  justified  by 
the  evidence  was  made  on  the  danger  of  over- 
emphasizing the  element  of  continuity.  But  this 
is  not  all.  The  moment  you  pass  beyond  the 
normal  you  find  a  well  established  body  of  knowledge, 
quite  inexplicable  by  any  mechanical  means.  Mr. 
Thompson  appears  to  think  that  those  of  our  Lord's 
miracles  concerned  with  disease  cease  to  be  such 
by  calling  them  cases  of  mind-cure.     But  neither 


264  APPENDIX 

mind-cure  nor  thought-transference  are  really  ex- 
pHcable  on  the  mechanical  theory.  We  now  know 
that  mind-cures  exist  and  have  begun  to  classify 
them,  but  they  remain  beyond  interpretation,  except 
as  the  free  exercise  of  psychic  activity.  The 
method,  in  fact,  by  which  Mr.  Thompson  gets  rid 
of  many  of  his  cases  is  quite  illegitimate.  The 
now  general  belief  in  mind-cures,  so  far  from  render- 
ing more  diflficult  our  faith  in  the  other  narratives, 
makes  it  far  easier,  because  it  lays  bare  something 
of  the  richness  of  psychical  power;  while  it  also 
enormously  strengthens  the  general  sense  of  the 
trustworthiness  of  the  narrative.  It  is  amazing 
that  these  discoveries  should  be  made  use  of  against 
the  miraculous.  Not  only  this,  but  the  increase 
of  interest  in  mysticism  and  certain  forms  of  Oriental 
religion,  while  it  may  not  always  be  Christian  in 
tendency,  is  sometimes  even  the  direct  opposite, 
yet  is  evidence  that  men  are  growing  wearied  of 
the  intellectual  way  of  looking  at  things  and  are 
seeking  for  modes  of  knowledge  more  intimate  and 
spiritual,  and  also  for  powers  that  are  beyond  the 
normal.  I  am  not  commending  this  tendency  in 
all  its  aspects,  but  its  existence  is  evidence  of  a  vast 
movement  of  the  human  spirit  which  will  sweep 
away  our  Western  incredulity  and  leave  such  argu- 
ments as  those  of  this  book  stranded  with  an  earlier 
attack  on  "Supernatural  Religion."  The  belief 
in  freedom,  which  w^as  rapidly  vanishing  a  genera- 
tion ago,  is  coming  back  with  a  rush,  and  though 
that  rush  will  produce,  is  producing,  many  results 


APPENDIX  265 

not  favourable  to  the  Christian  Faith,  it  will  at 
least  remove  some  of  the  antecedent  objections  to 
considering  its  evidence. 

More  and  more  does  it  seem  clear  that  we  have 
to  do  with  a  universe  in  which  being  exists  on  dif- 
ferent levels.  There  is  the  mechanical  level  of  the 
physicists,  or  inorganic  Nature;  there  is  the  sentient 
life  of  the  animal  world;  and  the  character-making, 
active  life  of  man;  in  the  latter  we  discern  alike  in 
ourselves  and  others  many  different  levels  —  the 
emotional,  the  intellectual,  the  spiritual.  All  are 
interpenetrating  and  none  (probably  not  even  the 
mechanism  of  Nature)  exist  in  active  isolation. 
But  it  is,  roughly  speaking,  convenient  to  divide 
the  world  in  this  way.  Now,  just  as  there  are  cer- 
tain powers  dependent  on  the  active  use  of  the 
intellect,  so  there  are  levels  of  knowledge  and  insight 
that  are  beyond  the  reach  of  the  intellect  and  only 
very  imperfectly  to  be  expressed  by  its  categories. 
These  levels  alike  of  knowledge  and  of  power  are  the 
region  in  which  events  called  miraculous  properly 
are  to  be  expected  —  events,  that  is,  not  to  be 
brought  about  by  the  normal  activities  of  the 
physical  world  or  by  those  of  man's  intellectual 
scientific  knowledge  of  it. 

It  is  this  fact  in  which  we  find  the  answer  to  that 
very  popular  objection  to  miracles,  that  believers 
in  them  only  see  God  "in  the  gaps"  of  the  natural 
order,  or,  as  Mr.  Thompson  puts  it,  the  only  way  to 
save  the  true  supernatural  is  to  deny  the  miraculous. 
As  has  been  said  before,  the  only  "supernatural" 


266  APPENDIX 

which  such  a  view  can  save  is  a  Pantheism.  Chris- 
tians no  more  deny  God's  presence  in  the  world, 
because  they  assert  His  action  above  and  beyond  it, 
than  a  behever  in  the  Sacramental  presence  denies 
His  presence  in  every  time  and  place.  On  this 
point  I  said  something  in  the  third  lecture.  What 
we  do  deny  is  that  God  is  no  more  than  the  world, 
which  is  His  work  and  not  Himself.  We  refuse  to 
imprison  God  in  Nature  or  to  assert  this  immanence 
in  such  a  way  as  to  deny  His  transcendence.  The 
ordinary  working  of  natural  laws,  if  we  so  phrase 
it,  may  be  called  the  indirect  and  the  miracle  the 
direct  act  of  spiritual  power.  I  may  be  serving 
God  equally  when  I  clean  my  boots  as  when  I  say 
my  prayers,  but  I  am  not  serving  Him  the  same 
way  —  and  miracles  are  no  more  than  analogous; 
they  are  to  ordinary  events  what  worship  is  to  work. 
It  may  be  true  that 

"  God  is  seen  God 
In  the  star,  in  the  stone,  in  the  flesh,  in  the  soul  and  the  clod." 

But  He  is  seen  to  be  God  more  fully  in  living  beings 
than  in  dead  matter,  in  developing  man  than  in 
brute  beasts,  in  the  spiritual  levels  of  life  rather 
than  the  animal  or  intellectual.  So,  though  He 
may  be  everywhere  present  in  natural  facts,  there 
may  be  some  which  set  forth  His  presence  and  His 
power  over,  not  merely  in.  Nature  by  some  startling 
and  unique  effect,  like  the  Resurrection;  and  thus 
we  are  able  to  say  with  Westcott:  "Christianity 
rests  on  the  conviction  that  in  the  Life  and  Death 


APPENDIX  267 

and  Resurrection  of  Christ  something  absolutely 
new  and  unparalleled  has  been  added  to  the  experi- 
ence of  man,  something  new  objectively  and  not 
simply  new  as  a  combination  or  interpretation  of 
earlier  or  existing  phenomena;  that  in  Christ 
heaven  and  earth  have  been  historically  united; 
that  in  Him  this  union  can  be  made  real  through 
all  time  to  each  believer;  that  His  Nature  and 
Person  are  such  that  in  Him  each  man  and  all  men 
can  find  a  complete  and  harmonious  consumma- 
tion in  an  external  order.  The  Life  of  Christ  is 
something  absolutely  unique  in  the  history  of  the 
world  —  unique  not  in  degree  but  in  kind.  It  is 
related  to  all  else  that  is  unfolded  in  time,  as  birth, 
for  example,  is  related  to  the  development  of  the 
individual."  And  thus,  as  he  says  elsewhere, 
**  miracles  are  more  properly  the  substance  than  the 
proof  of  revelation,"  and  they  are  rightly  needed 
in  any  revelation  of  redemption  that  embraces 
the  whole  of  being  and  stops  short  at  no  partial 
manifestation. 

True,  such  acts  must  be  rare  from  the  nature 
of  the  case.  Yet  that  they  occur  in  connection 
with  times  or  persons  of  special  spiritual  endow- 
ment was  (until  recently)  the  common  opinion. 
For  it  seems  to  me  beyond  question  that  in  the  so- 
called  ecclesiastical  miracles  there  is  a  greater  sub- 
stratum of  fact  than  it  is  now  fashionable  to  allow. 
For  instance,  in  regard  to  the  cases  mentioned  by 
Mr.  Thompson,  I  find  his  reasoning  quite  uncon- 


268  APPENDIX 

vincing  —  whether  in  his  minimising  account  of 
the  Franciscan  story  or  of  that  related  of  Father 
John  of  Cronstadt.  It  seems  to  me  the  purest 
perversity  to  deny  that  the  cure  mentioned  in  the 
latter  was  a  direct  answer  to  prayer.  Indeed  the 
view  which  such  an  interpretation  gives  as  to  the 
writer's  notions  of  prayer  is  one  more  argument 
against  his  whole  position.  I  believe  indeed  that 
stranger  things  have  happened,  and  are  now  hap- 
pening, than  we  can  account  for  by  any  ordinary 
means.  But  in  our  Western  world  we  have  become 
so  attuned  to  the  mechanical  method  that  we  have 
neither  eyes  nor  ears  for  any  other.  This  obsession, 
which  is  a  veritable  superstition,  is  now  passing. 
There  is  an  increasing  recognition  that  at  certain 
levels  of  psychic  experience  powers  may  be  tapped 
which  are  abnormal.  With  this  recognition  there 
will  come  once  more  the  hope  of  approaching  fairly 
the  remarkable  galaxy  of  such  events  which  we 
contemplate  in  the  New  Testament. 


vn 

For  one  thing  comes  out  more  clearly  than  any- 
thing else  from  Mr.  Thompson's  analysis,  the  volume 
of  the  experiences.  If  the  reader  did  not  know  the 
fact  before,  he  is  hardly  like  to  be  unaware,  after 
reading  Mr.  Thompson's  work,  of  the  number  and 
variety  of  supra-normal  occurrences  which  are 
recorded  —  even  if  we  grant,  which  I  do  not,  that 


APPENDIX  269 

he  can  erase  all  the  cures  and  treat  them  as  ordinary. 
It  appears  clearer  than  ever  that  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  soaked  through  and  through  with  miracle. 
The  task  of  removing  it  is  Sisyphean.  As  fast  as 
one  is  rolled  away  another  appears.  To  effect  his 
object  a  mountain  of  critical  ingenuity  has  to  be 
constructed.  And  it  is.  Theory  is  piled  upon 
theory,  interpretation  added  to  interpretation, 
every  possible  aid  is  taken  from  textual  criticism 
and  speculative  mythology,  every  form  of  non- 
natural  explanation  exhausted  before  the  records 
can  be  **  purged  of  their  offence."  When  they  are, 
the  reader  is  left  asking  himself.  Where  will  all  this 
end?  If  so  much  is  taken,  what  is  there  that  really 
remains?  If  the  narrative  has  to  be  so  mutilated, 
why  not  go  the  whole  hog  with  the  school  of  Drews 
or  Jensen?  Even  then  he  has  this  most  diflScult 
problem  before  him:  Are  the  facts,  as  trimmed  and 
fitted  into  normal  categories,  adequate  to  account 
for  the  martyrs  and  the  saints,  for  the  history  of 
the  Church,  for  modem  missions  and  Augustine's 
conversion?  I  do  not  say  that  they  can  be  proved 
to  be  inadequate  if  you  choose  to  postulate  enough 
of  the  creative  religious  instinct,  but  to  me  it  seems 
a  far  more  probable  and  reasonable  course  to  accept 
the  story  substantially  as  it  stands;  to  admit  that 
we  are  here  in  face  of  some  unique  operation  of 
that  Amor  che  move  il  sole,  e  V  altre  stelle,  and  to 
accept  that  summary  of  the  experience  in  the 
society  which  it  created. 


^70  APPENDIX 

True,  this  leaves  us  in  presence  of  a  mystery, 
and  no  one  can  assert  that  there  are  no  difficulties. 
Yet  what  corner  of  life  is  without  it?  Is  it  not 
most  probable  that  some  of  our  difficulties  are  due 
to  the  very  abnormality  of  the  facts  men  tried  to 
recall?  A  reHgious  account  of  the  world  without 
mystery  is  not  a  religious  account  at  all.  As  Dr. 
Sanday  said  in  his  sermon  on  the  book,  printed  in 
The  Guardian  for  May  12,  1911. 

"  Can  we  expect  to  make  both  ends  absolutely 
meet?  Is  there  to  be  no  margin  that  we  are 
obhged  to  leave  open?  Is  there  to  be  no  element 
of  mystery  in  which  we  must  needs  acquiesce  as 
mystery,  until  we  know  even  as  we  are  known?  If 
that  were  so,  the  field  of  religious  belief  would  be 
different  from  all  the  rest  of  human  life;  it  would 
have  in  it  less  of  mystery  just  at  the  point  where 
we  should  expect  that  it  would  have  more.  In 
short,  it  would  approximate  more  and  more  to 
that  type  which  the  poet  described  as  — 

A  reasoning  self-sufficing  thing. 
An  intellectual  All-in- All! 

"  I  do  not  think  that  that  is  exactly  the  type  that 
most  Christians  would  wish  to  aspire  to;  and  I  do 
not  think  that  they  are  under  any  obligation  to 
aspire  to  it." 

No  one  would  deny  the  superficial  plausibility 
of  this  book  any  more  than  they  would  that  of  the 
Jesus  according  to  S.  Mark.  But  both  are  in  my 
judgment  fundamentally  vicious  historically,   and 


APPENDIX  271 

the  supercilious  treatment  of  the  Founder,  "Jesus 
was  no  theologian,"  does  not  commend  the  author's 
thesis  to  a  reverent  mind.  On  the  whole  a  perusal 
of  the  books  strengthens  rather  than  weakens  one's 
hold  on  the  miraculous  and  shews  how  much  it  is 
an  integral  part  of  the  Gospel;  how  bare  and  drab 
is  the  view  of  things  disclosed  by  unbehef.  The 
real  question  is  whether  there  is  anything  beyond  the 
world.  If  there  be  such  things  as  real  change, 
fresh  experiences,  creative  evolution,  then  there  is 
no  antecedent  diflSculty  and  the  evidence  for  the 
great  Christian  Fact  seems  to  me  to  be  irresistible. 
If  there  is  not,  if  we  are  tied  to  a  mechanical  theory 
of  nature,  then  of  course  we  must  find  some  way  of 
getting  rid  of  the  abnormal  from  these  narratives. 
But  then  also  we  must  reject  a  God  living  and 
active  behind  the  phantasmagoria  of  sense;  we 
must  give  up  our  sense  of  a  world  of  struggling  and 
choosing  men,  and  then  must  set  aside  the  hope  of 
a  whole  creation  of  redeemed  spirits  existing  in  a 
risen  Hfe. 

The  question  is  not  about  law  or  no  law  in  the 
universe,  but  whether  the  law  we  normally  see  in 
operation,  or  think  we  do,  be  a  part  or  the  whole; 
whether  there  is  any  real  freedom  in  the  universe; 
whether  life  is  really  the  working  out  of  purely 
mechanical  relations,  all  of  whose  problems  might 
ultimately  be  solved  by  some  super-Babbage  with 
an  improved  calculating  machine;  or  whether  it  is 
wiser  to  think  of  it  as  existing  on  different  levels 
—  the  mechanical,  the  sentient,  the  animal,  and 


272  APPENDIX 

intellectual,  the  spiritual  —  and  admit  that  they 
all  interpenetrate  to  such  an  extent  that  the 
irruptions  of  life  at  the  last  level  produce  great 
and  unpredictable  disturbances  in  the  world  of 
sense. 


NOTES 


NOTES 


ARMAGEDDON  OR  THE  INTELLECTUAL 
CHAOS 

(1)  Busseirs  (Dr.  F.  W.)  BampUm  Lectures,  1905 
(Methuen  &  Co.),  p.  225.i 

(2)  On  this  point  see  Bussell's  Bampton  Lectures.  He 
points  out  that  it  "is  thought  by  some  to  be  a  philosophi- 
cal achievement  and  an  act  of  creditable  daring  to  call 
the  sum  of  things  God"  and  argues  the  futiHty  of  this 
gilded  atheism. 

"It  is  no  novelty  to  accuse  modern  Hegelianism  and 
ancient  Stoicism  of  being  indistinguishable  from  pure 
Naturalism,  of  employing  terms  out  of  their  current 
usage,  rather  from  habit  and  a  desire  for  comprehension 
than  from  any  conscious  wish  to  deceive.  .  .  . 

"The  tendency  to  save  the  comfort  of  religious  terms 
without  their  meaning  or  object  will  always  satisfy 
many  who  cannot  bear  to  lose  at  one  blow  the  traditional 
scheme  of  life.  .  .  . 

"It  mitigates  the  horror  of  determinism,  and  if  it  bring 
some  vague  solace  to  those  who  are  able  to  entertain  it, 
it  fulfils  that  standard  of  usefulness  which  is  the  sole  ulti- 
mate test  of  creeds  as  of  institutions.     Founded  securely 

^  The  passages  from  Bussell's  Bampton  Lectures  here  quoted 
are  printed  by  permission  of  Dr.  Bussell  and  Messrs.  Methuen 
&  Co..  Ltd. 

276 


276  NOTES 

on  faith  and  sentiment  (personal  but  incommunicable), 
it  can  resolutely  close  the  ears  to  outward  remonstrance 
on  the  part  of  pure  Positivism  or  moralistic  Religion."  — 
Bussell's  (Dr.  F.  W.)  Bampton  Lectures,  1905,  p.  113. 

(3)  "We  shall  grasp  eagerly  at  any  intimation  that 
God  cares  for  us,  has  work  for  us  to  do;  nay  has  need  of 
our  help.  It  is  on  this  secret  or  silent  conviction  that 
Western  life  has  been  founded  with  its  strange  and  anom- 
alous features  of  self-repression  and  common  action,  wild 
personal  enterprise,  and  reverence  for  custom  and  tradi- 
tion." —  Bussell's  Bampton  Lectures,  p.  133. 

(4)  Bergson  gives  an  admirable  account  of  the  prevail- 
ing tendency,  which  makes  everything  deducible  from 
the  laws  of  matter  and  motion;  a  fact  which,  if  it  were 
the  case,  would  mean  that  we  are  all  in  a  dead  world, 
working  itself  out  like  a  machine. 

**Les  explications  mecanistiques,  disions  nous,  sont 
valables  pour  les  systemes  que  notre  pensee  detache 
artificiellement  du  tout.  Mais  du  tout  lui-m^me  et  des 
systemes,  qui  dans  ce  tout,  se  constituent  naturellement 
a  son  image,  on  ne  pent  admettre  a  priori,  qu'ils  soient  ex- 
plicables  mecaniquement,  car  alors  le  temps  serait  inutile, 
et  meme  irreel.  L'essence  des  explications  mecaniques  est 
en  effet  de  considerer  I'avenir  et  le  passe  comme  calculables 
en  fonction  du  present,  et  de  pretendre  ainsi  que  tout  est 
donnS."  —  Bergson's  L'Evolution  CrSatrice,  p.  40. 
And  then  Du  Reynaud. 

"The  time  is  passing  when  men  can  comfortably  sup- 
pose that  Christian  behaviour  outlasts  Christian  dogma.'* 
—  Bussell's  Bampton  Lectures,  p.  133. 

(5)  Tancred,  by  B.  Disraeli,  Earl  of  Beaconsfield 
(Longmans,  Green  &  Co.). 

(6)  Carnegie's  (Canon  W.  H.)  Churchm^nship  and 
Character  (John  Murray),  p.  xiv. 


NOTES  277 

(7)  Eucken's  (Prof.  R.)  The  Problem  of  Human  Life 
(T.  Fisher  Unwin),  p.  297. 

(8)  Eucken's  (Prof.  R.)  Christianity  and  the  New  Ideal- 
ism (Harper  &  Brothers). 

(9)  Wister's  (Owen)  Lady  Baltimore  (Macmillan  & 
Co.,  Ltd.). 

(10)  Masterman's  (C.  F.  G.)  The  Condition  of  England 
(Methuen  &  Co.,  Ltd.). 

(11)  Haldane's  (Lord)  Universities  and  Public  Life 
(John  Murray). 

(12)  James's  (Prof.  "William)  A  Pluralistic  Universe 
(Longmans,  Green  &  Co.). 

(13)  "B.  D."  in  Pa.r. 

(14)  Prichard's  (H.  A.)  Kanfs  Theory  of  Knowledge 
(Clarendon  Press,  Oxford). 

(15)  Joseph  in  Mind,  October,  1910. 

(16)  Galloway's  (Dr.  G.)  Principles  of  Religious 
Development  (Macmillan  &  Co.,  Ltd.). 

(17)  Mill's  (J.  S.)  Three  Essays  on  Religion  (Longmans, 
Green  &  Co.),  "On  Nature,"  pp.  29,  30. 

(18)  Pearson's  (Prof.  Karl)  The  Orammar  of  Science, 
3rd  Edition  (A.  &  C.  Black),  p.  153-4. 

It  is  fair  to  say  that  the  writer  furnishes  a  mathemati- 
cal proof,  which  in  his  view  is  conclusive,  that  "miracles 
are  incredible"  (p.  142),  and  indeed  he  would  appar- 
ently be  willing  to  persecute  all  believers  in  mystical  or 
ecstatic  state  as  pernicious  to  social  welfare  (p.  138). 
But  it  does  not  seem  that  this  position  is  consistent  with 
that  taken  up  in  a  later  chapter  on  "Contingency  and 
Correlation."  Mr.  R.  A.  Bray,  in  an  article  in  the 
Daily  News,  called  attention  to  the  significance  of  Pro- 
fessor Pearson's  treatment  of  causation,  and  agreed  that 
his  view  leads  right  on  to  some  such  view  of  the  world 
as  that  outlined  by  M.  Bergson.    The  point  here  to  note 


278  NOTES 

is  the  insistence  on  the  individuality  of  things  and  the 
contingency  in  all  events  and  the  discarding  of  the  idea 
of  absolute  fixity.  Certainly  if  the  Christian  view  be 
true  that  this  world  is  encompassed  by  an  invisible  world 
of  spirits,  then  that  this  activity  should  be  responsible 
for  that  kind  of  variation  we  term  miracle  is  natural 
enough.  He  points  out  that  "all  the  universe  provides 
man  is  likeness  in  variations;  he  has  thrust  function  into 
it,  because  he  desired  to  economise  his  limited  intellectual 
energy"  (p.  167).  No  believer  in  the  fact  of  miracles  can 
surely  want  more  than  this.  "We  have  tried  to  get  all 
things  under  a  perfectly  inelastic  category  of  cause  and 
efiFect.  It  has  led  to  our  disregarding  the  fundamental 
truth  that  nothing  in  the  universe  repeats  itself."  The 
writer  of  course  disbelieves  in  will  as  a  cause  and  refuses 
to  consider  it  as  in  any  way  different  from  other  phenomena 
of  sequence.  But  he  certainly  shows  how  on  the  side  of 
science,  if  he  accurately  represents  it,  it  is  nonsense  to  talk 
of  the  absurdity  of  such  events  as  the  Resurrection  on 
the  hypothesis  that  this  world  is  not  all;  an  hypothesis 
which  is  in  no  way  ruled  out  by  his  own  theory,  which 
is  "purely"  agnostic. 

(19)  Bierbaum*s    (Prof.    Otto    J.),    Dostoieffsky    and 
Nietzsche,  Hibbert  Journal,  July,  1911,  pp.  827-8,  837. 

(20)  Garrod's  (H.  W.)  The  Religion  of  all  Good  Men 
(Constable  &  Co.,  Ltd.). 

(21)  Sturt's  (H.)   The  Idea  of  a  Free  Church  (Mac- 
millan  &  Co.,  Ltd.). 

(22)  Hay's  (J.  S.)  The  Amazing  Emperor  Heliogabalus 
(Macmillan  &  Co.,  Ltd.). 

(23)  In  the  Hibbet-t  Journal^  October,  1910.  Cf.  also 
the  following  passage  from  Sir  Oliver  Lodge's  The 
Christian  Idea  of  God  (Hibbert  Journal^  »^uly,  1911, 
p.  704) :— 


NOTES  279 

"The  modern  superstition  about  the  universe  is  that, 
being  suffused  with  law  and  order,  it  contains  nothing 
personal,  nothing  indeterminate,  nothing  unforseen;  that 
there  is  no  room  for  the  free  activity  of  intelligent  beings, 
that  everything  is  mechanically  determined,  so  that  given 
the  velocity  and  acceleration  and  position  of  every  atom 
at  any  instant  the  whole  future  would  be  unravelled  by 
sufficient  mathematical  power.  The  doctrine  of  Chris- 
tianity and  Determinism  is  supposed  to  be  based  upon 
experience.  But  experience  includes  experience  of  the 
actions  of  human  beings;  and  some  of  them  certainly 
appear  to  be  of  a  capricious  and  undetermined  character. 
Or  without  considering  human  beings,  watch  the  orbits 
of  a  group  of  flies  as  they  play;  they  are  manifestly  not 
controlled  completely  by  mechanical  laws  as  are  the  mo- 
tions of  the  planets.  The  simplest  view  of  their  activity 
is  that  it  is  self-determined,  that  they  are  flying  about 
at  their  own  will,  and  turning  when  and  where  they  choose. 
The  conservation  of  energy  has  nothing  to  say  against  it. 
Here  we  see  free-will  in  its  simplest  form.  To  suppose 
anything  else  in  such  a  case;  to  suppose  that  every  twist 
could  have  been  predicted  through  all  eternity,  is  to  intro- 
duce preternatural  complexity,  and  is  quite  unnecessary. 
Why  not  assume  what  is  manifestly  the  truth,  that  free- 
will exists  and  has  to  be  reckoned  with,  that  the  universe 
is  not  a  machine  subject  to  outside  forces,  but  a  living 
organism  with  initiations  of  its  own;  and  that  the  laws 
which  govern  it,  though  they  include  mechanical  and 
physical  and  chemical  laws,  are  not  limited  to  those,  but 
involve  other  and  higher  abstractions  which  may  per- 
haps some  day  be  formulated  for  life  and  mind  and 
spirit?  " 

And  further  on  he  continues  (710)  in  reference  to  the 
influence  of  departed  spirits: 


280  NOTES 

"The  region  of  the  miraculous,  it  is  called,  and  the  bare 
possibiHty  of  its  existence  has  been  hastily  and  illegiti- 
mately denied.  But  so  long  as  we  do  not  imagine  it  to 
be  a  region  denuded  of  a  Law  and  Order  of  its  own,  akin 
to  the  law  and  order  of  the  psychological  realm,  our  denial 
has  no  foundation.  The  existence  of  such  a  region  may 
be  established  by  experience;  its  non-existence  cannot  be 
established,  for  non-experience  of  it  might  merely  mean 
that,  owing  to  deficiencies  of  our  sense  organs,  it  was 
beyond  our  ken.  In  judging  from  what  are  called  mira- 
cles, we  must  be  guided  by  historical  evidence  and  liter- 
ary criticism.  We  need  not  urge  o  priori  objections 
to  them  on  scientific  grounds.  They  need  be  no  more 
impossible,  no  more  lawless  than  the  interference  of  a 
human  being  would  seem  to  a  colony  of  ants  or  bees." 

(24)  "It  is  time  that  attention  was  directed  to  the 
forces,  intellectual  and  social,  which  are  slowly  but  surely 
dissolving  our  Western  civilisation."  —  Bussell's  Bamp- 
ton  Lectures,  p.  145. 

(25)  "There  is  a  very  large  audience  waiting,  quite 
free  from  a  priori  notions  of  the  possibility  of  a  reve- 
lation, from  any  understanding  of  mere  historic  accu- 
racy —  waiting,  I  say,  for  an  answer  to  this  question, 
which  has  recently  gained  in  loudness  and  insistency :  Can 
we  afiPord  to  do  without  Christ?"  —  Bussell,  ibid.,  p.  55. 

II 
BABYLON  OR  THE  MODERN  CRISIS 

(1)  Cram's  (R.  A.)  The  Gothic  Quest  (Gay  &  Hancock, 
Ltd.). 

"Can  we  as  architects  answer  enthusiastically  to  the 
call  of  men  who  desire  a  Christian  Church  bringing  to 


NOTES  281 

their  assistance,  not  the  considerations  of  a  tradesman, 
but  the  fire  of  an  artist?  .  .  .  Can  we  come  to  look  upon 
architecture  as  a  part  of  the  vast  language  of  art,  the 
exalted  privilege  of  which  is  the  expression  of  tlie  emo- 
tions, of  the  loftiest  achievements  of  the  soul  of  man,  as 
they  can  be  expressed  by  no  other  human  power? 

"I  believe  we  can.  At  all  events  we  must  if  we  care 
for  our  art  at  all  except  as  a  means  of  making,  or  trying 
to  make,  a  living.  We  shall  have  much  to  fight  against. 
We  shall  find  opposing  us  a  great  civilisation  that  hates 
religion,  or  scorns  it;  a  civilisation  made  up  very  largely 
of  an  un-Christian  economic  system,  a  sordid  and  un- 
honoured  society,  venal  and  corrupt  politics,  rampant 
commercialism,  narrow  ideals."  —  Cram,  ibid.f  pp.  200-1. 

Cf.  also  the  following  passage  from  a  very  different 
writer.     Professor  Babbitt,  in  The  New  Laokoon,  writes: 

"If  the  arts  lack  dignity,  centrality,  repose,  it  is  because 
the  men  of  the  present  have  no  centre,  no  sense  of  anything 
fixed  and  permanent  either  within  or  without  themselves, 
that  they  may  oppose  to  the  flux  of  phenomena  and  the 
torrent  of  impressions.  In  a  word,  if  confusion  has  crept 
into  the  arts,  it  is  merely  a  special  aspect,  of  a  more  gen- 
eral malady,  of  that  excess  of  sentimental  and  scientific 
naturalism  from  which,  if  my  diagnosis  be  correct,  the  oc- 
cidental world  is  now  suffering.  It  remains  therefore  for 
us  to  consider  whether  there  is  any  means  by  which  we 
may  react  in  just  measure  against  this  naturahsm  —  by 
which  we  may  recover  humanistic  standards  without 
ceasing  to  be  vital  and  spontaneous  or  in  any  way  revert- 
ing to  formahsm."  —  Babbitt's  The  New  Laokoon,  p.  185. 

(2)  Arnold's  (Matthew)  Stanzas  in  Memory  of  the 
Author  of  Obermann  (Macmillan  &  Co.,  Ltd.). 

(3)  Ruskin*s  (John)  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  (G. 
Allen  &  Sons,  Ltd.). 


282  NOTES 

(4)  Bussell's  (Dr.  F.  W.)  "Christian  Theology  and 
Social  Progress ' '  (Bampton  Lectures)  (Methuen  &  Co. ,  Ltd.) . 

(5)  Wells's  (H.  G.)  New  Worlds  for  Old  (Constable  & 
Co.,  Ltd.)  has  an  illuminating  chapter  on  this  topic. 

(6)  Dickinson's  (G.  Lowes)  Justice  and  Liberty  (Dent 
&  Sons,  Ltd.),  p.  71. 

(7)  Ibid.,    p.  129. 

(8)  Cooper's  (E.  H.)  Twentieth  Century  Child  (John 
Lane). 

(9)  Masterman's  (C.  F.  G.)  The  Condition  of  England. 

(10)  Morris's  (William)  The  Earthly  Paradise  (Long- 
mans, Green  &  Co.) 

(11)  Cram's  (R.  A.)  The  Gothic  Quest  (Gay  and  Han- 
cock, Ltd.),  pp.  81-2. 

"It  is  no  explanation  of  the  hideousness  of  life  and  the 
puerile  mimicry  of  art  which  exist  today  to  say  that  we 
in  this  country  [the  United  States]  have  no  time  for  art 
and  the  other  amenities  of  life.  On  the  contrary  we  all 
know  that  art  is  not  a  scientific  or  economic  product. 
We  know  that  it  is  a  mental  temper,  a  spiritual  condition, 
and  we  know  that  it  is  just  as  much  an  adjunct  of  whole- 
some life  as  is  bodily  health.  We  have  time  enough  for 
art,  much  more  than  many  peoples  have  possessed  in  the 
past.  Beauty  takes  no  time.  A  good  church  can  be  built 
as  quickly  as  a  bad  church.  It  takes  no  longer  to  paint  a 
good  than  a  poor  picture  —  much  less  in  fact.  We  spend 
in  a  year  more  money  on  what  we  are  pleased  to  call  art 
education  than  was  spent  in  Italy  during  the  whole  four- 
teenth century." 

And  again  a  little  further  on: 

"If  we  are  to  possess  a  civilisation  which  is  worth 
expressing  itself  artistically,  we  must  do  something 
besides  establish  art-lectureships;  we  must  change  the 
conditions  of  life;  the  temper  of  the  people"  p.  93. 


NOTES  283 

(12)  Cf.  Bussell's  "Christian  Theology  and  Social 
Progress"  (Bampton  Lectures),  p.  319. 

"Other  religions  start  from  a  sublime  idea  of  perfec- 
tion and  come  down  to  average  human  level  with  reluc- 
tance or  condescension.  But  Christianity  starts  with 
proposing  to  the  sinner  the  spectacle  of  a  suflFering  crim- 
inal; and  thus,  by  at  once  meeting  the  distressed  and 
the  degraded  on  their  own  ground,  raises  on  this  basis  a 
theology  which  the  wisest  cannot  exhaust. 

"Other  systems  begin  deductively,  not  with  the  vari- 
ety and  complexity  of  our  life,  but  with  the  unity  and 
harmony  of  the  whole;  they  are  brought  down,  puzzled 
and  perplexed,  to  the  'principium  individuationis'  (if  I 
may  in  this  connection  use  the  phrase)  and  to  the  'prob- 
lem of  Evil.'  Christianity  boldly  confronts  the  diflBculty 
which  they  explain  away  with  devious  or  plausible  argu- 
ment or  else  altogether  avoid ;  it  starts  with  the  weakness 
of  God  and  the  sin  and  sorrow  of  pain,  and  on  this  foun- 
dation of  fact,  that  may  not  be  gainsaid,  builds  its  edi- 
fice of  morals,  of  piety,  and  of  hope. 

"It  is  strange  that  this  unvarying  appeal  to  'faith,'  a 
belief  in  a  reality  so  difiFerent  to  its  'appearances,'  does  not 
prevent  the  message  from  being  '  understood '  even  by  the 
humblest.  Indeed,  understanding  that  is  to  move  men 
to  action  and  endeavour  must  always  be  of  this  charac- 
ter; flawless  knowledge,  which  mirrors  unchanging  veri- 
ities,  carries  no  such  incentive  or  stimulus.  'To  know 
one's  self  as  a  perfect  member  [of  a  perfect  whole'  is  a 
definition  of  religion  which  for  most  men  would  have 
no  meaning." 

(13)  Eucken's  (R.)  The  Meaning  and  Value  of  Life 
(A.  &  C.  Black),  p.  139. 

(14)  Eucken  (R.),  ibid.,  p.  140. 

(15)  Eucken  (R.),  ibid.,  p.  57. 


284  NOTES 

(16)  Eucken  (R.),  ibid.,  p.  72. 

(17)  Lodge's  (Sir  Oliver)  Men  and  the  Universe 
(Methuen),  pp.  6,  8,  22  f. 

in 

CALVARY  OR  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  THE 
CROSS 

(1)  Russell's  (Dr.  F.  W.)  Bampton  LedureSy  1905, 
p.  121. 

"The  substance  of  my  contention,  as  of  every  earnest 
Christian  and  every  genuine  philosopher,  is  to  assure  the 
one  known  reality  of  its  sovereign  importance  and  value, 
not  merely  as  a  bye-product,  an  accidental  epiphenome- 
non,  on  the  surface  of  an  unending  evolution,  but  as  the 
supreme  centre  of  life,  and  being,  and  thought." 
And  again,  ibid.,  p.  134: 

"The  Gospel  transfers  the  interest  from  a  secular  or 
cosmic  process  to  the  single  life.  If  science  can  take 
nothing  into  account  butUhe  fortunes  of  a  solar  system 
or  a  sidereal  universe,  the  gradual  changes  of  a  species, 
the  normal  man,  dismayed  at  these  immensities,  returns 
to  his  own  pressing  needs. 

"The  individual  claims  (as  we  have  seen)  to  be  the 
subject  of  a  heavenly  solicitude;  and  among  religious  be- 
liefs must  always  prefer  that  system  which  assures  to 
him,  spite  of  all  seeming  and  present  loss,  a  central  place, 
an  ultimate  victory.  Now  the  Gospel  appeals  to  him 
because  in  its  very  essence  it  is  a  protest  against  Law; 
it  enlists  its  sympathy  because  Right  is  weak  and  not 
powerful." 

For  the  individualist  basis  of  all  true  social  feeling, 
see  the  following: 


NOTES  285 

"The  conception  of  life  is  only  'social/  and  devoted  to 
the  common  good,  because  it  is  primarily  and  profoundly 
'individualistic'.  Only  the  man  assured  of  the  lasting 
worth  and  dignity  of  his  own  life,  of  the  safety  of  his 
happiness  in  the  hands  of  God,  can  afford  to  sacrifice  it 
for  the  benefit  of  others,  in  whom  he  sees  children  of  a 
common  father."  —  Ibid.,  p.  141. 

(2)  Professor  Drews,  in  The  Christ  Myth,  sets  himself 
to  show  that  our  Lord  never  had  any  historical  existence 
at  all.  The  interesting  point  is  that  he  does  this  avowedly 
in  the  interests  of  religion  of  the  Pantheistic  type.  He 
declares  that  the  belief  in  the  historic  personality  of  Jesus 
is  the  great  obstacle  to  the  universal  triumph  of  "Mon- 
ism." Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson  has  developed  his  views  in 
Pagan  Christs,  a  work  in  which  he  endeavours  to  shew 
that  neither  Jesus  nor  Buddha  ever  had  an  historical  exist- 
ence, and  seems  inclined  to  surrender  other  well  known 
historic  persons  like  Montanus.  Jensen  claims  that  his 
view  is  less  radical;  his  point  is  not  that  Jesus  had  no 
historical  existence,  but  that  the  Jesus  of  the  Gospel 
never  Uved.  See  the  pamphlet,  P.  Jensen,  Hat  der 
Jesus  der  Evangelien  mrkiich  gelebt?  The  whole  is 
developed  in  connection  with  a  theory  of  the  Gilgamesch 
Epos,  which  is  one  of  the  wildest  doctrines  ever  put  for- 
ward in  good  faith,  and  sweeps  not  only  our  Lord,  but 
Moses,  S.  Paul,  and  others  all  into  one  net,  regarding  them 
as  successive  embodiments  of  the  mythical  hero-god. 
The  theory  is  wilder  than  the  wildest  exercises  of  super- 
stition, and  I  cannot  for  the  life  of  me  imagine  why  the 
medieval  peasant,  who  believes  some  story  which  is  prob- 
ably no  more  than  an  exaggeration  of  a  real  experience, 
and  at  least  is  spiritually  edifying,  is  to  be  treated  with 
contempt,  while  a  modern  scholar,  with  all  the  resources 
of  civilisation  at  his  back,  who  invents  a  doctrine  so  fan- 


286  NOTES 

tastic  as  this  is  only  regarded  as  a  little  extreme.  For 
what  is  abundantly  clear  is  that  the  whole  foundation  of 
Jensen's  theory  is  the  belief  which  he  shares  with  the 
ordinary  "liberal,"  like  his  opponent  Julicher,  that  the 
strange  stories  must  be  false.  He  says  this  himself  in 
his  reply  to  Julicher:  "Nun  aber  der  Charakter  schon  des 
vom  altesten  Evangelium,  dem  des  Markus,  Bezeugten. 
Darin  treffen  wir  bekanntlich  auf  eine  ununterbrochene 
Reihe  von  Dingen,  die  so  nicht  geschehen  sein  konnen. 
Ich  brauche  nur  zu  erinnern  an  das  sichtbare  Herabkom- 
men  des  Geistes  Gottes,  an  die  Stillung  des  Sturms,  an  die 
erste  und  die  zweite  wunderbare  Speisung  u.s.w.  oder  an 
so  manche  Heilungen  durch  Jesus,  hinter  die  jeder  Medi- 
ziner  ein  'unmoglich'  schreiben  musste.  Das  heisst: 
bereits  in  der  altesten  fUr  uns  konstruierbaren  und  der 
altesten  uns  bekannten  Gestalt  der  evangelischen  Uber- 
lieferung  finden  wir  so  zahllose  mythologische  Elemente, 
dass  sie  allein  schon  eine  hbchst  kritische  Betrachtung 
der  ganzen  Geschichte  notwendig  machen.  Ohne  jede 
Frage  konnte  ihr  deshalb  doch  ein  sogar  recht  umfang- 
reicher  geschichtlicher  Kern  zugrunde  liegen"  {Hat 
der  Jesus  der  Evangelien  ivirklick  geleht?  pp.  17,  18). 
And  he  then  goes  on  to  say  that  his  theory  of  Moses, 
Paul,  and  Jesus,  each  being  embodiments  of  the  Baby- 
lonian, the  God-Man  Gilgamesch,  supplies  the  necessary 
historical  foundation.  If  anyone  wants  any  evidences  of 
the  aberrations  to  which  the  refusal  to  allow  the  miracu- 
lous can  drive  learned  and  intelligent  men,  he  could  not 
do  better  than  read  the  so-called  arguments  and  parables 
of  the  pamphlet  Moses,  Jesus,  Paulus,  Drei  Varianten 
des  babylonisclien  Gottmeuschen  Gilgamesch.  This  is  all, 
moreover,  in  the  name  of  an  "ernsten,  wissenschaft- 
lichen  voraussetzungslosen  folgerichtigen  Kritik"  as 
opposed  to  the  "Fanatismus  blossen  Glaubens." 


NOTES  287 

(3)  Cheyne  (Dr.  G.  K.),  in  Hibbert  Journal,  July, 
1911.     Cf.  also  the  following  passage  from  the  same  critic. 

"The  section  which  does  appear  to  require  immedi- 
ately a  fuller  investigation  is  that  of  the  Passion,  i.e., 
from  the  Last  Supper  to  the  Death  on  the  Cross.  Is  there 
any  historical  nucleus.'*  As  the  critical  enquiry  stands  at 
present,  one  may  reasonably  hold  that  an  extraordinary 
teacher  and  healer  called  Jesus,  who  began  his  career  in 
Galilee,  incurred  the  displeasure  of  the  Roman  author- 
ities, and  sufifered  the  extreme  penalty  as  a  rebellious  and 
unrecognised  *king  of  the  Jews.'  But  is  it  not  possible 
that  the  statements  of  the  Messianic  claims  of  Jesus,  and 
consequently  also  of  the  intervention  of  the  procurator 
may  be  imaginary?  .  .  .  For  my  own  part,  I  think  that 
the  Barabbas  story  may  be  most  simply  explained  from 
a  Babylonian  source.  As  Zimmern  has  shewn,  there 
are  traces  of  a  primitive  custom  of  decking  out  some 
person  of  inferior  rank  as  king,  and  finally  putting  him 
to  death  in  place  of  the  real  king.  On  the  occasion  of 
what  ceremony  this  took  place  does  not  appear,  and  it 
seems  plain  that  the  author  of  the  Barabbas  story  only 
knew  of  a  far-off  reflection  of  the  primitive  custom  in 
the  shape  of  a  popular  story.  As  for  the  name  of  Barab- 
bas it  is  surely  a  corruption  of  Karabas,  .  .  .  which 
probably  indicates  the  Arabian  origin  of  this  supposed 
fierce  bandit.  ...  As  the  evidence  now  stands,  I  think 
that  Paul  most  probably  knew  a  little  about  a  great 
teacher  called  Jesus,  and  that  he  identified  him  with  the 
pre-existing  Christ  from  an  intuition  that  only  so  could 
the  precious  doctrine  of  the  Christ  be  made  a  practical 
power  among  mankind."  —  Hibbert  Journal,  April,  1911. 

(4)  The  Commonwealth,  Sept.,  1909,  p.  284. 

(5)  Eucken's  (Prof.  R.)  Meaning  and  Value  of  Idfe 
(A.  &  C.  Black),  pp.  26-27. 


288  NOTES 

"As  the  solutions  of  Religion  and  Immanental  Ideal- 
ism have  gradually  lost  their  force,  nature  has  come  to 
mean  more  and  more  to  man,  eventually  constituting  his 
whole  world  and  his  whole  being.  We  do  not  mean 
Nature  as  she  is  in  herself  —  for  to  modern  thought  the 
thing  in  itself  remains  a  dark  and  inscrutable  mystery  — 
but  Nature  as  she  appears  to  man  from  a  certain  point 
of  view  —  i.e.,  from  the  standpoint  of  mechanical  causa- 
tion. Though  natural  science  is  very  far  from  actually 
maintaining  the  identity  of  the  world  with  nature  —  this 
being  no  scientific  theory,  but  merely  the  creed  of  a 
naturalistic  philosophy  —  still  the  creed  has  its  roots  in 
the  discoveries  of  science,  and  there  is  today  a  growing 
tendency  to  interpret  science  in  a  naturalistic  spirit. 
Our  modern  era  began,  at  the  Enlightenment,  with  the 
sharp  separation  of  nature  from  soul.  The  more  insistent 
the  demand  for  a  soulless  nature,  the  more  urgent  the 
claim  that  the  soul  should  exist  in  its  own  right.  But  from 
the  very  outset  there  was  something  far  more  imposing  in 
nature's  illimitable  vastness  than  in  a  number  of  dispersed 
individuaHties;  and,  as  nature's  realm  continued  to  expand, 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  soul  should  tend  to  be  drawn 
within  it.  Not  only  has  its  empirical  existence  been  shown 
even  more  and  more  clearly  to  be  dependent  on  natural 
conditions,  but  there  has  been  an  attempt  to  appropri- 
ate its  very  essence,  and  eventually  to  fit  it  wholly  into 
the  framework  of  an  enlarged  naturalistic  scheme.  There 
has  been  a  continually  growing  tendency  to  identify 
science  with  natural  science,  and  reality  with  nature. 
If  any  difference  were  still  felt  to  persist,  it  seemed  to 
vanish  —  together  wilh  the  doubts  this  solution  naturally 
engendered  —  before  the  steady  advance  of  a  mechanical 
doctrine  of  development.  This  doctrine  claimed  to  assim- 
ilate man  entirely  to  nature  —  a  nature  destitute  of  all 


NOTES  289 

inner  principle  of  cohesion,  and  possessing  no  spontaneity 
of  its  own.  Thus  it  was  proper,  and  indeed  inevitable, 
that  the  attempt  should  be  made  to  give  a  value  to  human 
life  when  considered  as  a  mere  part  of  a  natural  process, 
and  to  shew  that  it  was  really  worth  the  living." 

(6)  In  an  Essay  printed  in  James's  (William)  The 
Will  to  Believe  (Longmans,  Green  &  Co.),  p.  145. 

The  following  passage  from  Eucken's  Meaning  and 
Value  of  Life  (A.  &  C.  Black),  pp.  94-95,  is  worthy  of 
note: 

"Freedom  is  essential  if  life  is  to  have  a  meaning.  It 
must  be  possible  to  give  a  personal  stamp  to  our  activity, 
and  press  forward  to  a  life  that  is  autonomous.  Other- 
wise our  life  is  not  wholly  our  own,  but  rather  something 
assigned  to  us  by  nature  or  by  destiny,  something  that 
transpires  within  us,  but  is  in  no  sense  moulded  by  us. 
A  half-alien  experience  of  this  kind,  a  r6le  imposed  on  us 
from  without,  must  ever  leave  us  inwardly  indifferent 
to  its  claims,  and  our  life  would  labour  under  a  paralyzing 
contradiction  if  that  to  which  we  were  cold  and  indif- 
ferent should  succeed  in  winning  our  whole  energy,  and 
becoming  for  us  a  matter  of  personal  responsibility. 

"But  freedom,  in  the  sense  which  concerns  us  here, 
finds  little  favour  with  the  modern  mind.  On  all  hands  we 
are  told  that  the  old  problem  is  at  last  solved,  that  man 
is  nothing  more  than  a  piece  of  the  cosmic  mechanism, 
and  that  only  an  inexact  mind  can  discover  in  the  machin- 
ery any  loophole  whatsoever  for  freedom.  Thus  freedom 
is  roundly  rejected,  and  the  fact  that  life  therewith  loses 
its  self-suflSiciency  and  intelligibility  is  either  overlooked  or 
treated  with  scant  regard  to  the  importance  of  its  effects. 

"Since,  however,  we  are  insisting  on  the  intelligibil- 
ity of  life,  we  cannot  so  lightly  dispense  with  freedom, 
and  we  are  therefore  bound  to  ask  whether  our  proposed 
20 


290  NOTES 

treatment  of  the  Spiritual  Life  does  not  set  the  problem 
of  freedom  in  a  more  favourable  light.  Now,  we  hold 
that  it  certainly  does  this,  and  does  it  in  a  twofold  way  — 
partly  through  establishing  truth  on  a  new  basis,  and 
partly  through  the  distinctive  content  of  reality  which  it 
reveals. 

"The  main  reason  why  freedom's  defenders  seem  to  be 
leading  a  forlorn  hope  is  that  science  has  presented  us 
with  a  picture  of  the  world,  a  scheme  of  reality,  in  which 
freedom  is  quite  out  of  place.  In  particular,  the  mechan- 
ico-causal  conception  of  nature  has  been  carried  over 
into  human  life  and  the  experiences  of  the  soul.  That 
such  a  conception  leaves  no  room  for  freedom  and  initia- 
tive cannot  for  one  moment  be  doubted,  but  whether  it 
can  justly  be  applied  to  the  things  of  the  soul  is  open  to 
very  grave  doubt  indeed. 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  true  significance  of  the  life- 
process  is  not  to  be  sought  through  any  roundabout 
reference  to  the  external  world.  The  decisive  factors 
are  really  the  phenomena  it  exhibits  and  the  demands  it 
makes  in  the  course  of  its  own  development.  If  we 
should  find  it  displaying,  at  least  on  its  highest  levels,  a 
deep-rooted  spontaneity  and  power  of  initiative,  then  we 
should  have  to  recognise  this  as  a  fundamental  fact,  and 
relegate  to  a  secondary  position  the  further  question  how 
to  accommodate  this  fact  with  the  chain  of  causes  and 
effects.  Never  should  first  things  take  the  second  place; 
never  should  the  experiences  of  the  personal  life  be  sacri- 
ficed to  the  demands  of  some  particular  theory.  We 
need  not  trouble  if  our  apprehension  of  reality  is  rendered 
less  smooth  and  simple.  How  can  we  be  certain  that  the 
world  must  be  constituted  in  the  exact  way  which  happens 
to  be  most  convenient  for  our  human  thinking?  But  this 
at  least  is  obvious,  that  whoever  reduces  the  world  to  a 


NOTES  291 

mere  chain  of  given  phenomena,  thereby  depriving  it 
of  its  spontaneity,  robs  it  forthwith  of  all  self-possession 
and  all  inwardness." 

(7)  Pringle-Pattison's  (Dr.  Andrew  Seth)  Theism,  p.  46. 

IV 
SIGN  OR  THE  CHRISTIAN  FACT 

(1)  Simpson's  (Dr.  J.  G.)  Christtis  Crucifixtis  (Hodder 
&  Stoughton),  p.  266. 

(2)  There  is  a  suggestive  criticism  of  Dr.  Sanday  in 
the  appendix  to  Bishop  Chandler's  Faith  and  Experience. 
The  Bishop  points  out  how  Bergson's  theory  of  the  rela- 
tion between  intuition  and  reasoning  provides  a  better 
rationale  of  the  problem  than  does  the  rather  dubious 
doctrine  of  the  subhminal  self. 

(3)  See  Burkitt's  (F.  C.)  Tfie  Failure  of  Liberal  Christ- 
ianity. The  whole  pamphlet  is  most  valuable  and  should 
be  studied.  I  am  not  contending  that  the  views  of 
either  Professor  Burkitt  or  some  of  the  other  scholars 
mentioned  are  entirely  satisfactory,  only  that  they  have 
given  up  the  materialistic  theory  of  the  meaning  of  the 
Christian  Church.  In  face  of  existing  attempts  to  rush 
us  into  the  complete  acceptance  of  that  theory,  I  say  that 
this  movement  is  remarkable,  and  should  give  even  the 
youngest  academic  person  pause,  before  he  surrenders 
at  discretion  to  a  view  which  in  the  last  resort  drives  us 
to  materialism,  or  at  least  Pantheism  of  a  mechanical 
type. 

(4)  Eucken's  (Prof.  R.)  Christianity  and  the  New 
Idealism,  pp.  26,  80. 

"We  must  insist  more  strongly  than  ever  that  the 
salvation  which  religion  promises  to  man  is  a  salvation 


292  NOTES 

not  of  his  natural,  but  of  his  spiritual  self,  that  imposes 
on  him  a  momentous  choice  and  demands  of  him  heavy 
sacrifices.  He  who  minimises  the  opposition  that  is 
involved,  and  obscures  the  tremendous  seriousness  of 
the  issue,  may  easily  let  his  religion,  despite  all  respect 
for  outward  form,  degenerate  into  a  refined  Epicurean- 
ism" (p.  26). 

"Its  unconditional  advocacy  of  the  claims  of  Spiritual 
Life  implies  the  most  vigorous  repudiation  of  all  natural- 
ism, whether  of  the  crasser  or  more  refined  kind,  and  the 
championing  of  freedom  in  the  teeth  of  all  attempts  to 
turn  life  into  a  merely  natural  process.  Its  conviction 
of  the  wide  gulf  —  nay,  diametrical  opposition  —  between 
the  condition  of  the  world  and  the  imperative  require- 
ments of  the  Spiritual  Life,  is  in  itself  a  most  decisive 
repudiation  of  Pantheism  with  its  glorification  of  the 
world,  and  at  the  same  time  a  repudiation  of  all  those 
movements,  such  as  Intellectualism,  ^stheticism,  and  so 
on,  which  ignore  the  necessity  for  an  inward  change. 
Finally,  its  proclamation  of  a  world-wide  revolution 
through  spiritual  might  and  redeeming  love  involves 
the  utter  casting  out  of  all  embittered  pessimism  and 
despairing  scepticism.  With  its  focussing  of  all  its  con- 
viction into  a  Yes  or  a  No,  Christianity  gives  certitude 
to  the  whole  life,  setting  the  work  of  thought  on  a  safe 
path,  and  assigning  it  a  clearly  marked  goal."  —  Ibid., 
p.  86. 

(5)  Hardy's  (Rev.  T.  J.)  The  Gospel  of  Pain  (G. 
Bell  &  Sons,  Ltd.). 

(6)  On  "Authority,"  see  a  very  valuable  new  book 
by  Rev.  J.  H.  Leckie,  Authority  in  Religion  (T.  &  T. 
Clark). 

(7)  Cram's  (R.  A.)  The  Gothic  Quest,  p.  292. 

"The  established  ceremonies  of  the  High  Mass  take 


NOTES  293 

their  place  among  the  few  supreme  triumphs  of  art  in 
all  time;  in  a  way  the  great  artistic  composition  takes 
precedence  of  all  in  point  of  sheer  beauty  and  poignant 
significance.  There  is  no  single  building,  no  picture,  no 
statue,  no  poem,  that  stands  on  the  same  level,  even 
Parsifal  is  a  weak  imitation  and  substitute.  In  the 
ceremonial  of  the  Mass  art  comes  full  tide." 

(8)  Bradley's  (F.  H.),  Mind,  No.  74,  p.  171  and  also 
p.  154.  Cf.  also  the  following  dicta  of  Dr.  Bussell, 
Bampton  Lectures. 

"All  ultimate  verdicts,  where  they  are  not  tempera- 
mental petulances,  are  ventures  of  faith  or  acts  of  faith.** 
— Bampton  Lectures,  p.  210. 

"There  is  not  the  slightest  warranty,  in  the  history  of 
mankind  or  of  thought,  for  supposing  that  we  can  ever 
sum  up  the  Universe  as  a  whole  except  by  an  effort  of 
will  or  an  effort  of  faith.  .  .  . 

"It  is  clear  that  to  apply  any  summary  title  to  a  whole, 
which  can  never  be  known  in  its  totality  or  in  its  still 
undetected  possibihties,  is  either  an  impertinence  or  a 
paradox,  or  —  an  act  of  faith,  undertaken  on  account  of 
life's  practical  needs.  Solvitur  ambulando  is  still  a  suffi- 
cient if  unscientific  solution."  —  Ibid.,  p.  256-7. 

(9)  Cf.  the  following  words  of  M.  Boutroux  in  his 
valuable  study  Science  et  Religion. 

"Chacun  de  mes  actes,  la  moindre  de  mes  paroles 
ou  de  mes  pensees  signifie  que  j'attribue  quelque  realite, 
quelque  prix  k  son  r6le  dans  le  monde.  De  la  valeur 
objective  de  ce  jugement  je  ne  sais  absolument  rien,  je 
n*ai  nul  besoin  qu'on  me  la  demontre.  Si  par  hasard 
j'y  reflechis,  je  trouve  que  cette  opinion  n'est  sans  doute 
que  Texpression  de  mon  instinct,  de  mes  habitudes,  et 
de  mes  pr6juges,  personnels  ou  ataviques.  Conforme- 
ment  k  ces  prejudices,  je  me  suggere  de  m'attribuer  une 
202 


294  NOTES 

tendance  k  pers^verer  dans  mon  6tre  propre,  de  me  croire 
capable  de  quelque  chose,  de  consid^rer  mes  idees  comme 
serieuses,  originales,  utiles,  de  travailler  a  les  repandre  et  k 
les  faire  adopter.  Rien  de  tout  cela  ne  tiendrait  devant 
le  moindre  examen  tant  salt  peu  scientifique.  Mais  sans 
ces  illusions  je  ne  pourrais  vivre,  du  moins  vivre  en  homme." 
—  Boutroux's  Science  et  Religion,  p.  360. 

I  quote  some  further  words  of  M.  Boutroux: 

*'L' amour  fait  de  deux  dtres  un  etre  en  laissant  k 
chacun  d'eux  sa  personnalit^,  bien  plus,  en  accroissant, 
en  realisant,  dans  toute  sa  puissance  la  personnalite  de 
l*un  et  de  I'autre.  L'amour  n'est  pas  une  bien  exterieur, 
tel  qu'une  association  d'inter^ts,  ce  n'est  pas  non  plus 
I'absorption  d'une  personnalite  par  une  autre ;  c'est  la 
participation  de  I'etre  a  T^tre,  et  avec  la  creation  d'un 
^tre  commun,  I'achevement  de  I'etre  des  individus  qui 
forment  cette  communaute."  —  Boutroux,  ibid.,  pp. 
370-371. 

"La  religion  offre  a  I'homme  une  vie  plus  riche  et 
plus  profonde  que  la  vie  simplement  spontan6e  ou  m^me 
intellectuelle,  elle  est  une  sort  de  synthese  ou  plut6t 
d'union  intime,  et  spirituelle,  de  I'instinct  et  de  Tintelli- 
gence,  dans  laquelle  chacun  des  deux  fonde  avec  Tautre 
et  par  la  m^me,  transfigure  et  exalte,  possede  une  pleni- 
tude et  une  puissance  creatrice  qui  lui  6chappe,  quand  il 
agit  separement."  —  Boutroux,  ibid.,  p.  371. 

"Si  la  science  positive  est,  a  elle  seule,  la  mesure  du 
vrai  et  du  possible,  I'homme  est  moins  qu'il  ne  se  croit. 
Car  I'individualite,  la  personnalite,  la  dignite,  la  valeur 
morale,  le  r6le  special,  et  la  destinee  superieure,  qu'il 
persiste  k  s'attrouper  sont  en  contradiction,  non  seule- 
ment  avec  les  conclusions  actuelles,  mais,  ce  qui  est  plus 
grave,  avec  les  principes  les  m^thodes  et  I'esprit  m^me 
de  la  science  positive." 


NOTES  295 

"Nagu^re  fascine  par  la  clart6  et  Futility  de  la  science, 
et  domine  par  elle,  I'esprit  humain  tend  aujourd'hui  k 
se  ressouvenir  qu'il  est  essentiellement  vie,  action,  effort 
vers  le  mieux,  et  a  r^integrer  la  science  dans  cette  vie 
int6rieure  dont,  en  r^alite,  elle  procMe.*'  —  Boutroux, 
Avant-propos,  p.  x,  of  Fr.  trs.  Eucken,  Les  Grands  Cou- 
rants  de  la  Pensie  Contemporainey  X. 

"[L'esprit  philosophique]  est  raison,  et  en  m^me  temps, 
il  est  foi  et  risque:  ein  Sucken  und  Versuchen,  ein  Wetten 
und  Wagen.  II  faut  savoir,  il  faut  penser,  et  il  faut 
parler.  II  faut  travaiUer  pour  Vincertain.  .  .  .  Les  plus 
grandes  creations  sont  celles,  qui  provoquent  le  plus  de 
creations  nouvelles."  —  Boutroux,  ibid.,  XIII. 


APPENDIX  297 

APPENDIX 

KING  RICHARD   THE  THIRD   AND  THE 

REVEREND  JAMES  THOMPSON 

(1)  Thompson's  (Rev.  J.  M.)  Miracles  in  the  New 
Testament  (Edward  Arnold). 

(2)  Cf.  Loisy,  Les  Evangiles  SynoptiqueSy  i.  286-94. 

(3)  For  this  view  mde  Loisy,  ibid.,  i.  937. 

(4)  On  this  point  I  should  like  to  refer  the  reader  to 
Dr.  Field's  remarks  in  his  admirable  pamphlet  "An 
Open  Letter  to  the  Reverend  James  Thompson." 

(5)  See  Langlois  (Ch.  V)  and  Seignobos  (Ch.),  Intro- 
duction to  Historical  Studies.  Translated  by  G.  G. 
Berry  (Duckworth  &  Co.) 


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